Are 10-20 year old CDRs still playing?

If you are using these paper /plastic window sleeves, don't put the data side of the CDR facing the plastic window.
If you do, and the sleeves are relatively new, you will have eroded cd-r's in a few months.

 

All of my CD-R's from the last 16 years still play just fine. The only exceptions are a handful of disks I made, summer 2000, that were on verbatim CD-R's. I label each disc the date it was made. The bottom of those Verbatim discs blue colored, and the tops of them were starting to peel off. Thankfully I found those discs in time and was able to rip them to my computer and copy them to new CD-R's. Especially because two of those discs are ultra-rare material from The Beach Boys, none of which has never been leaked to footwear.

 

So, they still have tracking noise , surface pops and clicks, and limited frequency range, eh?

 

I will vouch for that.

 

I recently backed up all of my CDR and DVDR discs to hard drives. I had some DVD-9 discs unreadable. I also had some old CDR discs that were really old or had labels on them not read. I had pretty good luck in general, but anything I care about I back up.

 

I've also had several hard drives fail. I get a new one every year and copy everything again

 

Any CDR with an adhesive label on it, particularly the kind that cover the entire side, is a time bomb...

The differing coefficients of thermal expansion between the label and the polycarbonate layer of the CDR mean that there are continual stress forces applied and over time these have a very high chance of destroying the data layer underneath.

Adhesive labels on CDRs are bad bad news for longevity.

 

The DL/DVD -9 have a high mortality rate even after "perfect" burns. Other than Verbatim, I've had DL media go bad just from looking at it.

IMHO the only recordable media suitable for archiving are 1st Class level DVR-R's made by Verbatim or Taiyo [or pre 2007 TDK's which are impossible to find now] . For Verbatim they must not be the "life" or "value" series and Taiyo [Now JVC/Taiyo] the 8x TYG02 (aka YUDEN000T02) is highest quality media they ever made and some of the best all-time. For more info, see the links in my quoted post.

As for Blu-ray recordable media - forget for long term storage and never use the organic dye ones.

Bottom line when dealing with recordable media is if you don't want to loose the data have at least 3 copies located at different locations or even better backups [plural] on different digital media such as hard drives or digital tape. As for 3rd party cloud space, just remember your stuff isn't as safe or private as you might want or hope it to be - but the music forum is not a place for that discussion.

 

I could care less if someone else somehow gets access to my music collection. So what? I have local copies of the entire thing, anyhow.

Anything private I have backed up in the cloud is encrypted. It's as safe there as it is anywhere.

 

I mean in general for everyone, not just for your particular personal situation

BTW you are correct if strongly encrypted it is safe from prying eyes so to speak, but not safe from loss.

 

I recently found an old CDR from '97 or so...still worked like a charm!

 

I've have an Avenue records gold cd that went bad on the one track I played repeatedly. Strange.

 

Just 2 of them. They stopped playing altogether. But one of them had a big sticker glued to the label and the other a spray-painted red label I'm sure permeated the acrylic resin and f...d up the aluminium layer.

OAH I have cdrs I recorded myself from as back as 1995 that still play as if they were pressed ones.

 

Could be a useful tip, as I am considering how much shelf space I could save if I took CDRs I have out of the jewel cases they were sold in.

 

I tested many of mine from the 90s a couple of years ago. Most were fine - Kodak Gold, or those Verbatim cdrs made to look like vinyl records.

Had a few Memorex with problems, but I think that had been known by others as a dubious product quite a few years ago.

 

The Kodak Gold Ultima CD-r were probably the best gold CD-R media ever made. Nice looking blanks.

However, the issue with gold in general is:
Gold discs ARE NOT the best discs! Gold discs have lousy reflectivity, and the dye quality found on these blanks simply does not burn well in our tests (or the tests of others). It’s a waste of money for mediocre media.

The best gold recordable media ever made is not even as good as the Verbatim [non "life" and non "value" series] or Taiyo which are a lot less money. Which brings us to Mr Twain's quote “It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

 

Virtually all of mine are on gold Mitsui/MAM-A or Taiyo-Yuden. I've never had one fail.

 

I've noticed over the last couple of years that some of my CDRs (various companies, none really high end) have basically turned into blank discs.

I buy CDs so the only CDRs I have are live recordings and my own compilations. But there's a lot of those.
It's very frustrating to think of how much of my collection has turned into coasters.
And I don't think I even want to know.

 

I've ever only used Verbatim (some of their CDR was (is?) even TY made under this brand) or Taiyo Yuden (mostly under the Plextor brand) and not a single one have gone bad over time yet. Very low coaster rate when burning too. TY is the one that's best overall imho, with lowest error rates both new and over time. Just ordered a 50 pack of TY waterproof CDR, never tried them before, should be fun (bit expensive though). Most discs are burned with the last generation of Plextor burners they constructed and manufactured themselves (755/760) with autostrategy and sanyo main chip. Wonderful burners with accompanying special software that lets you error check in many ways to ensure your discs are burnt properly, including jitter and the shape/alignment of the pits.

To put it into perspective, I've go a couple of thousand of CDR and DVDR, probably around 3000.

 

I have a burned disk from 2005 I just recently found in some old boxes that plays perfectly fine

 

I also have quite a few Mitsui/MAM-A CD's dating back to the 1990's and all play just fine.

 

I can vouch for this, just about all the ones I burned sometime around 2000 are now dead.

 

Another thing to consider - excessive heat is destructive to CD-R's. Most archival tests give estimates based on temperatures that probably hover around room temperature or any temperature that's normal for your average household.

Just about every computer and especially car CD players generate a lot of heat, not the kind of temperatures you'd leave your home at if you were inside. It's not the player but the fact that you've got a car engine or a processor in the computer that's going to heat up a lot. It's not going to be terrible right away, but cumulatively, over hours and hours of play, it will be destructive to a recordable disc, moreso if you just leave the disc in there days at a time.

You don't hear a lot of people mention it, but it's right there in the information on every CD-R you buy, about storing your discs at the right temperature. Again, the average discman or home CD player doesn't really heat up at all, but if you ever play a disc on a road trip or on any computer, just put your palm on the disc, chances are it feels pretty warm.

 

...and to thing Apple was critisized for not having built in cd/dvd, burner drives.

 

Here's the bottom line: if you have a disc that still works, do not count on it being readable much longer. As a collector of demos from musicians I'm particularly fond of, I deal with this thing often. There are already a number of things which are widely considered to be "lost"

Cd-r apologists can be proud of their supposed longetivity - but back these things up while you still can.
Older discs should take priority, discs with any adhesive labels should take priority

It's very easy to ignore a real issue when it doesn't effect you at the moment.