My reading of the article also leaves me with the feeling that it was slanted toward sensationalism rather than objective advice.
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Seems like that to me too. Consider the following quote from the article.
Not long, according to Herr Kurt Gerecke, IBM expert on data storage. Mr Gerecke told the magazine PC World that two years is about the average life expectancy of a burned disc, and if you keep it in a dark, cool place it might last for five.
That would have to be a complete falsehood. I've been recording on el cheapo CDs for around 10 years and I've never come across a single one that I've been able to verify doesn't read as a result of deterioration or oxidation of the disc.
I have, however, come across the occasional disc, CD and DVD, that doesn't read because it wasn't recorded properly in the first instance, or because of some system incompatibility or fault. The first time this happened was before I got my first CD burner. I'd upgraded my 4x CD reader to a 20x machine hoping it would reduce the 2 full minutes it took to read a compressed 6MB Kodak PhotoCD file.
I was dismayed to find that some files just wouldn't open with the new reader. My first thought was, 'these Kodak CD discs are already beginning to deteriorate'. Why would I think that? Because I'd read reports similar to the above. Such stories have been bandied around for years and can be very misleading. In this instance, the cause of the problem was the CD reader itself. I returned it to the store for a refund and got my old 4x reader re-installed.
