R.I.P., The thread for dead CD-Rs Options

[westgroveg]

These are the oldest in my collection of CD-R's, they where burnt by a friend of mine in Argentina & I now have them in Australia they where stored in a humid environment while in Argentina & a hot environment while in Australia (never exposed to sunlight though) & they have no scratches (flawless). The only thing they have in common is they all have gold dye.

TDK

Mitsui_1

Mitsui_2

Mitsui_3

Princo

King Pro Mediatek

Ricoh

This post has been edited by westgroveg: Jul 9 2004, 05:25

[Pio2001]

I've always got much better (though not prerfect) results with gold CDRs than silver.
The fact that my silver CDR got yellow proves that there was some SO2 attacking them, with light. If I'm not mistaken, silver turns yellow because of sulfur (can anyone confirm ?), and I've learned in school that silver can't turn yellow without light. If my problems, or a part of them, come from the metal, then keeping them in the dark would have improved their lifetime significantly.

[user]

yes, if they really use Gold particles/surface for the pressing, it will be chemically more stable than compared to a silver surface.

Silver (Ag) can be attacked/oxidized by Sulfur, S. The result would be Silversulfid, something black, maybe in low concentrations/thin films on surfaces 'yellow-brownish'.

To initiate a chemical reaction, you need often somehow a starter, to overcome a certain energy barrier, which you could overcome in a lot reactions by light, as sunlight contains UV wavelengths, which are quite powerful.

If I think of CD-R with organic compounds layers for the data, which are written/burned by our CD-writer lasers, then you know immediately, that any sunlight, maybe other light sources, too, are poison to CD-R.

[be020261]

Mitsumi.

I've burn on many media, but these mitsumi are crap! EAC cannot secure RIP from 3 months old CDR. (I've burnt them myself, using EAC+CUE sheet)

I've lost several CDs with this scrap.

This post has been edited by CiTay: Jul 6 2004, 19:37

[JeanLuc]

I've always got much better (though not prerfect) results with gold CDRs than silver.
The fact that my silver CDR got yellow proves that there was some SO2 attacking them, with light. If I'm not mistaken, silver turns yellow because of sulfur (can anyone confirm ?), and I've learned in school that silver can't turn yellow without light. If my problems, or a part of them, come from the metal, then keeping them in the dark would have improved their lifetime significantly.

You aren't confusing silver with aluminum ?

[Pio2001]

From http://www.roxio.com/en/support/discs/cdrmfg.html

There are four metals that are inert to polycarbonate and sufficiently reflective to be used as a reflective layer. These are gold, silver, copper, and aluminum. Aluminum is the most cost-efficient and most widely used for prerecorded pressed discs, but most CD-R discs use gold or silver because of their greater reflectivity. Since the translucent dye polymer layer reduces the amount of laser light that is reflected back from the disc, a highly reflective metal is desirable.

[JeanLuc]

I was just asking, because silver sulfide (Ag2S) will turn black, not yellow - just try to eat an egg with a silver spoon. Silver Sulfite (AgSO3), the most probable silver/sulphur combination in presence of SO2 might be of yellow colour but cannot be created without the presence of water (air humidity, along with the fact that polycarbonate can take up water up to 1,5 mass percent might be sufficient) to create H2SO3 wich might then corrode silver ...

[kotrtim]

ITS TIME TO UPDATE THE LIST
checking back cd-rs burnt 3 yrs back

ops.....found out "plasmon" rotten
black spots appear.

the data is till recoverable but i don't the disc will stand any longer

Plasmon is one of the worst brand i'd ever seen

Plasmon CD-R loads 2 times slower than brands like ritek, acer, mitsubishi, prodisc
but its still better than CMC

pressed CD - ~3 sec
ritek, acer, mitsubishi, prodisc - ~4 sec
Plasmon ~ 8 sec
CMC magnetics ~ 24 sec

[GoaTrancer]

One cheaper class Maxell died on me a few days after burning. I still dont get how this could happen? There wasnt a single scratch on the cd.
And I wrote the disk at a safe speed of 8x, wierd.

[sergelac]

Sony should be in Highest quality brands not Low quality brands.
i use High Speed Sony CD-RW (650 MB 4x-10x) and never have problems with them

one of them, i erase it and rewrite on it more than 25 times and it is still working perfectly


these are very good :
Kodak CD-R
Fujifilm CD-R 80
Verbatim


maxell are crap


my burner is YAMAHA CRW2100E 16x10x40

This post has been edited by sergelac: Sep 24 2004, 04:47

[Ashed]

What about black CD-R's? Are they better than the gold ones?

[dreamliner77]

Sony should be in Highest quality brands not Low quality brands.
i use High Speed Sony CD-RW (650 MB 4x-10x) and never have problems with them

one of them, i erase it and rewrite on it more than 25 times and it is still working perfectly


these are very good :
Kodak CD-R
Fujifilm CD-R 80
Verbatim


maxell are crap


my burner is YAMAHA CRW2100E 16x10x40

RW is a whole other beast than -R. I think you will find that most people here use -r, and mostly for audio. And of the brans you listed, with the exeption of Kodak, they could be anything. You need the ATIP info.

What about black CD-R's? Are they better than the gold ones?

SHort answer. No. Might be better in some older readers, but in generally have lower reflectivity and are usually CMC.

[kotrtim]

Sony should be in Highest quality brands not Low quality brands.

I can simply explain why,
The first Sony Manufactured CD-R I used is "Sony 700MB/80min Supremas"
Very bad CD-R
my writer Artec WRR-52 refuses to write more than 74min on this media, and the speed is restircted to 40X and below

Sony CD-RW 4x-10x....650MB, are you sure they are sony?,
i think they are rebranded Mitsubishi disc, that's why they are good.
Almost all the 650MB CD-RW are Mitsubishi... I don't see any other manufacturer produce 650MB CDRW.

Verbatim's CD-R are marginal to good CD-R
"DataLifePlus (Azo)" are the best of Verbatim, they use Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. dye
"Datalife Pastel" are the best of verbatim too! they are Taiyo Yuden

DataLife/Valulife........Be careful! they are CMC!

I've seen many bad reports about CMC, but i found out that Imation CMC are quite good!

[Pio2001]

It depends if they are Datalife Plus Super Azo or Datalife Plus Metal Azo. Metal Azo is the old traditional dark blue Verbatim. Super Azo are the new ones optimized for high speed. However, they have problems at... high speed !

[Pio2001]

What about black CD-R's? Are they better than the gold ones?

Black CDRs can be silver or gold. It's the plastic that is black. The silver ones that I got, from HiSpace, were manufactured by MPO. They had some C2 errors right after burning and quickly died. I don't remember who manufactred the Memorex ones, but for me they were worse.

[sergelac]

What about panasonic and verbatim dvd-ram
are they good quality brands ?

[weaker]

Hi,
after I occasionally found this thread, I decided to join the party:

Recently I have reburned some 4+ year old CD-Rs due to read errors. I kept the originals though. So I fired up CDRidentifier and here are the results: (They fit quite nicely with the list at the beginning)

The worst of all CDs with lots of C2 and quite some CU errors was... CMC Magnetics (guessed that? )
Next worst was LeadData, directly followed by AMS Technologies (never heard of them). Those AMS discs were sold under the Tevion/Lifetec brand in german supermarket chain ALDI.
Another disk I backed up (more out of fear that all my old CDs are crap now) was a Ritek but it was still perfectly readable (6,3avg/40max C1,no C2 or CU).

All discs (except one) were burnt with an old trusty PX-820i SCSI burner. They were stored in jewelcases (and therefore dark) under normal environmental conditions (not like Pio's )

greets,
weaker

[GeSomeone]

Another (near) dead CD-R, it contained an Audio-CD. It still plays in the stand anlone player, has big problems any computer drive.
Lots of C2 errors in Nero Speedtest
This was a Traxdata Silver (80min) burned end of 1999
ATIP info from disk
ATIP start of lead out: 79:59:74 (sector: 359999)
Manufacturer code: 97 31 00 - Ritek Co. (Type: 0)

[cerberus]

Ty are the best for me and play in "any" cdplayer.
I have TY with 10 years +- sold as philips x4 and still impecable.

[Halcyon]

If you have failed discs that have also changed looks (visual impairments like color defects, pinholes, etc), then please post a picture here if you can.

I'm also interested in high resolution images (pictures) of failed discs.

You can send them to me via e-mail if you want: halcy at tiscali dot fi.

Cheers,
halcyon

[JeanLuc]

Those AMS discs were sold under the Tevion/Lifetec brand in german supermarket chain ALDI.

These were the older 650 MB types they sold @ Aldi before switching to 700MB RITEK, right ?

[Halcyon]

On a more positive note:

I just scanned a batch of Kodak Infoguard Gold (no speed rating) CD-R discs burned between 1993-1999.

All of them read back with very few C1 errors (on both LiteOn and Plextor drives) and no c2 errors at all.

So, using quality media, it is possible to get to the 10 year mark with data in tact, if the media is stored/handled properly.

This post has been edited by Halcyon: Oct 14 2004, 18:04

[westgroveg]

On a more positive note:

I just scanned a batch of Kodak Infoguard Gold (no speed rating) CD-R discs burned between 1993-1999.

All of them read back with very few C1 errors (on both LiteOn and Plextor drives) and no c2 errors at all.

So, using quality media, it is possible to get to the 10 year mark with data in tact, if the media is stored/handled properly.

Halcyon, do you think you could provide some scans?

I would attribute their long life due to the gold contained, not the media brand. If you check my list of old CD-R's scans I have a low quality brand (Princo) & it has lasted 7 years with no C2 errors.

What I would really like to see is 10+ years from non gold Kodak media, as I remember silver Kodak's where reported to be troublesome, that's why I bumped Kodak down on the quality rating list.

This post has been edited by westgroveg: Oct 14 2004, 22:54

[alfa156]

never again princo

[Jojo]

never again princo

yep. The Sony ones suck too. For instance, the Sony Supremas 700MB are not useable for Data stored after the 74 Minutes mark...I burned some 690 MB rar archive on it and right after burning the archive was already corrupt...how can they sell such CD's as 700MB blanks? That's fraud...

This post has been edited by Jojo: Mar 10 2005, 19:33