archival cd-r - really true?

[a.carlini@ntlworld.com]

Zane H. Healy wrote:

> I've sworn by Verbatium DataLifePlus blanks for nearly 10 years, but
> am a little nervous about the current ones after the last two on a
> spindle woudln't burn for me (one that was even older burned just
> fine).   

They're not a problem. Neither are the ones that seemingly burn 
and verify OK but fail when you test them in a DVD-ROM drive.
(I'm assuming that if you care enough to burn it to DVD-R,
you'll do a minimal amount of testing at creation!). The 
problem ones are those that burn and test OK and then
die later.

So far I've only had one DVD-R go bad (that I know of) and two
CD-Rs (ditto) but I've not gone back and re-tested a representative
sample, I've just retrieved data and never found a dud other than
those mentioned above.

Naturally for data that I truly care about, I burn it twice.

I'll gather some real data when the successor to DVD-R is
firmly entrenched and I move data across from CD/DVD. Of course,
the problem then will be longevity of the new media format.

Antonio

-- 

Antonio carlini
arcarlini at iee.org