Do CD-R's decay/degrade?

thunderpoitthunderpoit
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
ok, i had a spindle of cd's that i rarely used, but i got my cd player and cds stolen from me recently and was reburning my collection from itunes. It was working smooth at first, but all of a sudden, itunes would refuse to burn (gave me a 10 digit error code) and toast reported medium errors on every disk i tried. What is going on here? how could an entire spindle be bad?



btw, the error itunes gives me is -2147352512 if that helps at all

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 11
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    have you tried burning cd's from another spindle? I too have came across a bad spindle once, and only half of them worked, and those that did work didn't read all the time... go figure. HOpefully its not your burner.
  • Reply 2 of 11
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    All optical media, in theory, will last indefinitely when left in a dark, DRY place. Belive it or nor, moisture CAN affect optical media. See if there was any form of mildew, etc. or any dust on the CDs/DVDs.
  • Reply 3 of 11
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    depends on the timeline you're talking about.



    they don't go bad in a year or two, but i've had a lot of brands that no longer work after about 7-10 years.
  • Reply 4 of 11
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    CD-Rs have been in use for less than 6 years.
  • Reply 5 of 11
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    no, they've been around longer than that. the first cd-r's i burned were 1x.



    2x was a huge deal.



    they weren't common, but they were around.



    the first cd recorders showed up in 1988, 15 years ago.
  • Reply 6 of 11
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    i remember burning 1x discs back in 1991 in HK... 150k/sec... woo hoo!



    even the fastest SCSI burners needed an internal 700Mb drive and huuuge 2Mb buffers to give smooth burns and avoid coasterama. a bit bleeding edge, but the version on my Mac ][ fx (System 6.7 IIRC) would burn HFS, PC, PhotoCD and even CD-I



    i recall burning 12" laserdiscs on a big SONY machine the same year





    ymmv
  • Reply 7 of 11
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    DAMMIT!!! band new spindle, same goddamn error!



  • Reply 8 of 11
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    try cleaning your burner. if you have it spray some canned air in there to clean it. otherwise see if you can blow in there (no spit!) to get any dust off of the lens that might be in there.
  • Reply 9 of 11
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    maybe when it complains "Media Error" its talking about my taste in music and not my blank cds....









    ill try dusting it later, dont have any canned air now. would one of those cd lense cleaners work?
  • Reply 10 of 11
    kwondokwondo Posts: 217member
    I had serious problems with memorex 12X (which was the fastest at the time yr 2000). I backed up image data for my client and I don't know what happened to theirs but my backup copy disks, the foil on the top surface actually lifted off and flaked away like a snake skin shed. I couldn't believe it. All the images og mine were unrecoverable. Now, I don't buy the cheapest deals...
  • Reply 11 of 11
    thunderpoitthunderpoit Posts: 709member
    hmmm, all the disks ive tried were memorex disks.... What kind do you guys reccomend?



    BTW, humidity is the cause of that problem, its happened to me too
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