How Long Do Discs Last?

Situation: You’ve carefully backed up some sensitive data to CD or DVD. Afterwards you took the extra step of placing the disc in a standard jewel case instead of a fold-out case. You even took the extra precaution of putting the disc in that case in a room where the ambient temperature is never too cold or too hot.

Less than one year later you open that jewel case to retrieve some data off the disc and see spots and blotches on the data side. The disc is unreadable. You took all the precautions in the world so what happened?

What happened is that the disc became oxidized. The aluminum separated from the plastic which is why you see those spots and blotches.

All the precautions you take will be for naught if you use cheap media because yes, that 50-pack of discs you bought on sale was discounted for a reason: poor manufacturing. And yes, they can oxidize in less than a year.

Well-manufactured discs – assuming they’re stored properly – usually have a shelf life of about 5 years. Premium discs can last as long as 10.

Want quality and reliability? Go for the blue and gold.

How do you know a good disc from a bad one? Its data-side color. The ones with a blue or gold data-side are far superior to those that are silver-colored.

Brand name does count

Best: Taiyo Yuden premium media. Very expensive. Totally worth it.

Good: Verbatim and TDK make above-average discs.

Middle-of-the-road: Memorex, Maxell, Fujifilm

Bad: Sony and any store-branded disc.

The one most people will pay attention to is Sony. Yes, Sony makes crap optical media and always has. This is why it’s always available and always on sale.

Have you ever received a disc from a friend and it won’t read in your CD/DVD drive? It was probably on Sony media.

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Pat
Checking out prices through Amazon, why is Sony more expensive than the other brands that you mentioned that happened to be better?

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
No idea. Sony is crap media and it’s always on sale at Wal-Mart. Better to go with another brand, trust me on that one.

Steve Stone
Every spindle I’ve purchased has been on sale. I don’t have this problem, even with CD’s I burnt in the year 2000.
Force Flow
There’s a difference between the low-quality brands being on sale, and the better quality brands being on sale.
http://www.perkster.net perkster
for DVDs i often use Ritek and they are very good brand, CDs are generally cheap now whatever brand you buy
http://www.itelya.com bjzapper
I think you would be crazy to trust any media for an extended time. ReDo important backups regularly.
http://www.darknet-fusion.co.cc Vertimyst
Aha!
My friend’s Memorex Black CD-R was all splotchy, we figured someone had spilled something on it. We tried cleaning it, but no go. Really had us puzzled. Funny thing is, this just happened today and I got home and read this article. Oh, the irony.
Regarding CDs/DVDs, I’ve always used Memorex. I find their CD-RWs don’t work so well, though.
archer9234
I have Memorex CD-R’s with data that’s more then 6 years old and still going strong.
John
Unfortunately if you work for DOD, which I do, they disabled flash drives, external hard drives, etc. for security purposes. If I want to backup data on my work computer I am forced to used optical media. How long does pressed optical media, the ones that normally come with your computer, accessories, etc. last?