No. Wrong inference. I never believe anyone just because they say so. Why should I expect anyone to be believe me just because I say so? I only believe what makes sense to me and what sounds reasonable, and then only provisionally. It is a fact that I have never lost any data from an optical disc that I know was recorded properly in the first instance. It is a fact that I have lost data stored on a hard drive, more than once. I don't expect an optical disc to deteriorate whilst just sitting on a shelf, but I've certainly come across reports of so-called bit rot, peeling layers and chemical attacks from the adhesive of lables. There are always faulty products around, whether optical discs, cameras or hard drives. Bad news is generally more interesting than good news.
Then why post anything or read anything? Think about it, all of life and all information is that way if you want to get technical. Toyota makes reliable cars, says who? Ferrari's have a 2-4 year waiting list, says who? Do you believe the man at the dealership because he says so? How about 2 dealerships? 10 dealerships? Miele makes quiet and reliable dishwashers? Says who? If we never believe anything anybody tells us then we would spend our entire lives researching every aspect of it. I know for a fact that certain cds degrade over time because I have tested many brands. I always checked my discs and I checked discs over the course of months and years just to see how well they held up. I NEVER labeled a disc (except for Primera printers) never wrote on one and always verified the data. I have NEVER had a Kodak or Mitsui (Mam-a) disc go bad, however I have had many other brands go south on me, same data burned at the same time by the same burner. The fact is the CD has only been around since 1982 and cd burners have only been around since 1988 and really only "affordable" for the past 10 years. CDs pressed at the factory are totally different than what a cd-r is and just a "little" research will show that certain dyes just didn't hold up well over time; YES, believe it or not just sitting there on a shelf they can and do go bad rendering your data worthless. Yes, a disc could be good for 5 years and one day it's no longer readable. I always used Plextor burners for many years the Rolls-Royce standard of burners.
I have lost data on hard drives, usb flash drives, microdrives, CF, CDs, and even tape. Use enough computers and related devices and eventually you will have a failure with EVERYTHING.
I believe even MR had CD-Rs go bad and he had to go to his back up hard drive, let me check.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-05-09-04.shtmlOK, I found it
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial...back.shtml#Note"A Cautionary Note
A few weeks after publishing this article I received an e-mail from a customer, ordering a print of one of my photographs from 1999. It wasn't one of my more popular (or recent) photographs so it wasn't on my new storage system, one of the Firewire hard drives.
For some reason though (Murphy was at work — as always) I couldn't find the CD ROM on which it was stored. I told the customer that he'd have to wait a week or so until I could get to my archive CD, which is stored off-site at my summer cottage.
The next weekend, upon arriving in the country, I retrieved the disk and was stunned to discover that the disk was unreadable on my laptop's drive. Upon returning to the city, and many hours of fussing later (along with some luck), I was able to retrieve the file, make the print and ship it off to the customer.
But, this made me wonder about all of my CD ROM backups. I have more than 100. I checked every one and found that 3 of the 100 were either totally or partially unreadable. These disks were on brand name media (Verbatim and Maxell), and had been verified after burning. Fortunately in each case the files on these bad disks were also located elsewhere and so nothing has been lost. (That's a 3% failure rate in just a few years. How many more will have deteriorated by next year?)"
And that has been a common theme even if the discs were burned by "expert" CDR "Master Burners" CDRs go bad, it's been proven by many people including myself, but hey anybody who has ever had a cdr go bad must have done something wrong? If the disc was readable for 5 years what possibly could they have done wrong? NOTHING, the discs go bad because the dyes degrade, YES, even if they are just sitting on a shelf in a climate controlled room.
"Bad news is generally more interesting than good news." ABSOLUTELY, When the WTC was standing 110 stories up in the air nobody cared what made them stay upright, but when they fell to the ground everybody wanted to know why did they collapse and so the contacted my best friend to find out.