Trouble reading burned DVDs written to high-quality media., A cautionary tale Options

[jkauff]

I have a collection of CDs that I don't listen to very often archived as FLAC files on DVD discs. The original discs are in storage, not easily accessible.

The other night I decided I wanted to put the Buffalo Springfield box set on my iPhone to listen to at work. I tried to copy the FLAC files from the DVD to a hard drive before making AAC versions for the phone. I have the box stored on a Taiyo Yuden DVD-R that's only been used once--when I archived the files. Two songs from two different volumes wouldn't copy no matter what I did. I used Nero Recover, and that managed to extract at least some of the data, but not complete files. I cleaned the drive laser. I tried CD/DVD repair fluid on the disc. Nothing worked. At some point, I'll need to dig the box out of storage and re-rip it.

I've always believed that using quality discs, stored properly, for backup was safe. Now I'm not so sure.

I think in the future I'm going to put each disc in a RAR archive with a recovery record, and generate a set of PAR files that I'll store on a hard drive. I never thought this extra level of protection was needed, but I'm a believer now.

Just thought I'd share for the benefit of anyone else who's using that same method of offline storage.

[greynol]

Did you try a different drive?

[jkauff]

Did you try a different drive?

Yes, with the same result.