Another excuse for a hard drive based system/back up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3940669.stm

hmm, it says "I was shocked to see a constellation of pinpricks, little points where the light was coming through the aluminium layer."

Scratches are one thing but general decay, hmm hadn't really considered that one.

Better get those CD's backed up

 

I think it was Dom who said he returned loads of CDs because of laser rot problems. I think they are obliged to replace them if they do that, since they were originally said to last a lifetime - someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

 

the worst thing i've found for cd's is heat. when i lived in texas i used to keep about 20 cd's in my car in one of those black caselogic cases. if i kept a cd in the case for more than a few weeks the silver bits in the cd would start to crack and tear. presumably this was due to the plasic and aluminium layers expanding and contracting at different rates. after that i took my cd's with me when i left the car.
cheers


julian

 

I've left CDs in the back of my car in the same way for quite a while now.

 

I've seen the same thing happen with CD-Rs of various brands that I've burnt over the years - mainly data.

I've also - worryingly had some DVD-R data discs that I burnt last September that became unreadable in months. No noticable damage that's visible, they've just become very difficult to read. Lucikly, I managed to find a DVD reader that would accept the discs so that I could burn them to fresh media.

However, it is very worrying that this sort of thing seems to happen. Can't say I've seen it with any of my audio CDs, which I've been buying since Christmas '91.

 

paul,
i'd be careful then. mind you the temperatures over there were ridiculous, frequently getting into the 40's and higher at midday. and all with broken a/c :cry: :cry:
cheers


julian

 

Pinholes were a problem with early discs but I havent bought a CD with any in years.
A lot of my CDs are quite old but all are fine. In fact I've never had one that was considered faulty.

I think a lot comes down to people treating them like toys and then wondering why they dont work after dropping them in a shot-peening machine.

The general public are on the whole pretty thick.

 

I've got mates like this - I refuse to loan them CD's at all for that very reason. They buy a new CD, back it up on the computer, and then I usually find it on the floor a few days later, covered in scratches

 

I have only had one CD that 'broke' because of the top layer coming off so you can see through the aluminium - my transport tycoon game CD-ROM for the PC .

I have had CD-Rs become unreadable over time thanks to heat and light (back when I had my hifi and all my music in the attic, which really did it no good at all during summer, where it really did get uncomfortably hot).

My CD player (which i think may be faulty and will be replaced when I can afford it) seems picky about scratched disks, far more so than the Sony HU I have in the car, or a portable walkman, and as such I have a couple of only relatively mildly scratched CDs that certain- for that reason I take special care to avoid mistreating them.

But certain things are unavoidable really, and the transport tycoon CD I mentioned earlier, it was basically a manufacturing fault as it was kept in the same way as many other CDs which had more frequent use, yet it was the one that ended up flaking...has anyone actually tried to return an 'old' CD that they felt had stopped working for reasons of age alone, and the resultant damage to the disk thanks to oxidation etc?

 

Yep - I've had 12 PDO-manufactured discs go south on me. The odd thing is, my old Sony CDP-M12 (seperate component on my midi system) used to skip on these discs when they were brand new, but no other player was affected. When the machine went in for repair for the third time since I'd got it (in the shop for 6 months of its' first year - POS!) they claimed it was the discs...

2 years down the line, the oxidisation was well under way. PDO's manufactured copy of Woman2Woman Two was the first one that I noticed wouldn't play, and that was made in 1994, so the late 80s thing is a red herring. PDO still make silver, rather than aluminium, discs, which is why they have a slightly yellow cast compared to a normal alu CD.

I also have 3 original-from-launch 1982 Laservision discs (analog-audio Laserdisc) - "The nine lives of Fritz the cat", "Who dares wins" and "Raise the Titanic!". The only one that isn't rotted is "Who dares wins", and this looks amazing, even today, on Laserdisc. Fritz is OK barring fizz in the picture, and RTT! is static-y on the audio, and fleky on the picture. These all look mint.

CDs are far simpler to make, so there should in theory BE no reason for them rotting...

 

who would you return the Cds to ..?? just that I haven't kept a single reciept from the 500 cds that I have...sigh...

 

Mr Cat, I dont think you'd need to keep the receipts. Contact the label who distributed the album and they should replace it for you, I think.

 

Out of interest, what the fcuk is a "shot-peening machine"?

 

Its a machine that you put mechanical parts in (such as gearbox bits) to toughen them up. What basically happens is the metal is blasted by small high velocity pellets which cause impacts on the metal surface, kind of compressing it slightly which hardens it up. Its used in specialist parts for racing etc.

Thats the rough gist.

 

Cheers Puma, you learn something new every day...