Are your CDs dying?

Commercially reproduced CDs — the kind from major music labels — are manufactured using a physical stamping on the metallized layer of the CD, which is a physical imprint on the media. Writable CDs and most writable DVDs and Blu-rays use a chemical organic dye layer that is inherently unstable and will often die within five years.

According to the Library of Congress, even commercial CDs made in the same year by the same company can have very different production processes leading to startling differences in failure rates and modes.

The Storage Bits take
If you haven't already ripped your treasured CDs yet, now's the time! Whether you pick a lossless codec or high quality mp3, you can't rely on a commercial CD's quality to protect music you love.

http://www.zdnet.com/are-your-cds-dy...tag=TRE17cfd61

I have already ripped all my CDs to high bit rate .mp3 (for compatibility with existing players) and .wav (for possible conversion to lossless compression standards in the future). As long as the files are properly backed up (and I backup everything to the teeth), they will last longer than I will. I've had one commercial, stamped CD and several indie (burned) CDs go bad on me. Fortunately, all were at least ripped to mp3 before they failed.

Yepperz, I noticed that during the early years of CD burning that some of the CDR's that used blue dye went bad fast. Within just 3 years in some cases you could see the deterioration around the edges.

I have some audio CD's that I burned in 2003 that are still good. They are CD-R's that were burned, at the slowest burn speed of the CD burner (probably 4X). Most of the older CD-R's I have, that I burned, are either TDK or Verbatim. The audio CD's I have burned in the last 5 years are all on Taiyo Yuden CD-R's. Taiyo Yuden is considered the best.

However, I have worked with a user in England a couple of years ago that had failing burned discs. I don't know what blanks that had been used.

Good job I have a Tape Deck and a bottle of Acetone then.

Wolfeymole said:

Good job I have a Tape Deck and a bottle of Acetone then.

Acetone?

Obviously you never had a tape deck pet. :)

Acetone is used to clean magnetic debris from the read head.

You probably use it on your talons lol.

Wolfeymole said:

Obviously you never had a tape deck pet. :)

Actually, I have (I've had several in the distant past) but I still don't know what the acetone is for. I'm guessing it's for cleaning the heads but I don't actually know.

Well you do now darling.

Women commonly use it to remove nail varnish.

Nail polish remover actually isn't very good for cleaning since the acetone in it also has lanolin added to it to counteract the drying effect of the acetone. Also, many nail polish removers are now acetone free. For cleaning anything, straight acetone is better. I always just used 90%+ isopropyl alcohol for cleaning tape deck heads (or commercial head cleaner, which was pretty much the same thing).