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.