Are 10-20 year old CDRs still playing?

Now if you can find one of these you will be set.

 

I've not had any CDr's fail. I've beat some of them up so bad with serious scratches that they skip, but as a disc failure? Never had one yet.

 

When I ripped my Gf's CD collection last week there were approx. 20 CD-r copies of albums. These were made on CD-r from TDK, Verbatim and some other cheap domestic brands (even a Playstation black disc style).

They dated from 2001-2004 and some had been baked/frozen in a car glovebox for 8+ years.

All of them ripped perfectly according to Accurip (whatever) in dbPoweramp.

Edit - In fact a few weeks ago I was clearing out some of my computer gear and I came across some data CD-rs that were burnt around 1998 on a SCSI connected Plextor external CD burner (had to bring in my ISA SCSI interface card for my Canon image scanner from home to get it to work). This was from the day when there was no burn protection or caching and you had to make sure the HDD you were copying from wasn't a slave on the same IDE channel as the OS HDD otherwise you got costly coasters.

If we burnt a CD we put up a 6 foot exclusion zone around the machine. "Don't touch it! Don't look at it!"

Oh yes...the data was still fine.

 

Oh yes; fortunately, I learned that lesson VERY early on.

 

My promo cd-r copy of self-titled Adios Diablo's debut cd from 2001 ( a cool local industrial metal band) had an adhesive label covering it entirely. Coaster. I even contacted the band and they weren't able to burn me a copy coz they lost the original. Bummer

 

I thought I was the only one who said these exact words back in the late 90's.

All CD-R's still playing fine here too from as far back as 1999.

 

The other day I wanted to revisit my first VHS-to-DVD tranfer from circa 2000. I had backed it up onto a better-quality blank some 6-7 years ago for fear that the original media (a lousy Ridata) might deteriorate over time.

Guess what; the Verbatim was unreadable !! Luckily the friend I'd given the Ridata away to kept the Ridata and it not only was fine but he managed to copy it flawlessly for me.

The VHS was a rarity I'd payed U$ 60 for and payed U$ 20 for the transfer. Of course I'd sold the tape to recover some money.

So it's russian roulette with blank media these days.

 

All those I made off my Philips cd-recorder from the late nineties are still going strong. I haven't had a one of them fail...keep 'em in a cool dry place.

 

I had one of those in '95; same situation with the cds I recorded !!

 

Haven't had any problems with the CDRs I burned almost 2 decades ago.

Wish I could say the same for the few thousand DAT tapes I recorded around the same time.

 

Burn 'em slow and then keep them out of drastic temps and conditions and they should last forever (or at least the lifetime of a mere mortal).

 

Not too slow now! Its not 2000 anymore.

 

As already stated above.

Welcome to the dawn of CDR burning.

 

Here are my random recordable media reliability thoughts:

My first thought when reading your post is It's your CD player. Others have mentioned CD players having problems.

Most of the CD-Rs I burned 10-16 years ago work fine, provided I stored them accurately. A few of the '99/'00 imation discs had tiny holes in the aluminum layer which affected data retrieval- this meant maybe 5-6 files couldn't be recovered where hundreds of others were.

Most of the DVD+Rs I burned 10-13 years ago worked fine- playback and copying of contents.

Memorex is the one brand I had a very bad experience with, where I bought a spindle of their CD-Rs and the data being written to them was horrendously unreliable. I knew all about buffer underruns and had adequate hardware and software to counter them. It is possible I bought from a "bad batch", also it's possible their CD-Rs aren't even produced by the same manufacturer as that time. It doesn't matter, I'll never place that much trust in their recordable disc products again.

In this day and age, why not securely rip your promo/advance CD-Rs losslessly? Assuming you've got it backed up, you can burn tracks to new discs to your heart's content until the cows come home.

 

It must be some kind of fluke, but those cheap Ridata discs have been reliable so far

Maxell too, by the way...

 

Do you know of a format that has perfect sound ?

 

Most folks on here who have a record collection don't be doin' no "direct sunlight, dirt, bad stylus etc." bizness.

 

I had a few problems with PRINCO CDRs...My Imation CDRs from long ago still play flawlessly as many other brands in my collection...

 

that's why I never get rid of any of my pressed CDs...

 

The first CD-Rs I ever burned at my studio back in 1994 all still play and rip perfectly without any errors.
The CD-Rs that I received from my first trades 15 years ago are all still good as new.
Even the ones I burned from the mid to late '00s, which are mostly TY and ProDisc, have held up great.
The story started to turn when the balance shifted from major brands (Maxell, Fuji, Sony, etc.) using high quality media with low speed burning to inconsistent, medium to low quality media with high speed burning.
However I've always taken good care of them so the majority (98%) of the thousands of CD-Rs I have still play just fine.
A few of the data CD-Rs and DVD-Rs I burned back in the '00s might not be recognized at first but luckily I always manage to find a drive that will read them.
Overall I feel that CD-Rs have worked out pretty well for my needs but I can't understand how in the year 2016 we still don't have a reasonably priced consumer storage medium that can be guaranteed to last a lifetime.

 

Yep, a mate did a few Genesis, ummm, unofficial recordings for me off the web just over ten years ago and they're all fine.

 

My first recorded CD-Rs date back to 1992. Still going strong. Nowadays media ? Crapshoot.

 

I have several music only (the ones used on home CD audio recorders) Verbatim CD-Rs (MusicLifePlus) which I burned in 2001 and they play perfectly. They are stated as made in the European Union.

 

**** happens, get over it......

 

Mine haven't died yet....had to scratch them on the front to finally kill them....flakes everywhere now.