CDs, Hard drives, data storage & cassettes...

[grobelaar]

Had my first total CD failure recently – perfectly good, hardly marked CDR – skips so much that its unlistenable – tried it in numerous different CD players – including a very expensive Arcam deck – practically the same result, just differing levels of skipping. The plastic on the CD is hardly marked – just a few very fine marks, but a carefully inspection of the metallic layer reveals what looks like bubble like defects in the metallic layer. I was wondering if anyone else had suffered this? And had any idea or links to what causes this – is it long term laser exposure – or defects in manufacturing.

Doesn’t really bode well as long term storage medium for my collection of mixes or anyone’s music in fact. I was wondering if anyone else has suffered similar failures, the CD is only about two years old. This has left me wondering how to handle my music collection – I like CDs, as they are portable and pretty universal (i.e. with just a little innocuous wallet you can go round people’s houses after parties and subject them all to your taste in music for hours). But the longevity of the CD is in question, so I’m thinking I should just move to computer storage and buy an iPod for portability (I know I can get a cheaper mp3 player – but I’m a Mac fan, so that’s hardly likely now is it?)… Which just leaves you with the question of hard drive failure and what happens when the 20gig hard drive on my iPod packs up after 2 years, not only have you lost your music, but these things cost over £400. Maybe the only answer is to have both – but don’t use the CDs – simply have them has back up.

Hmm I seem to remember people talking about lifetime worth of perfect digital storage, sadly like most scientific boasts its proving to be a load of crap. I suspect financial considerations are coming to the fore and many of these products have in-built redundancy, a typical sad state of affairs, marketed as the future – but actually worst that compact cassettes – tapes, maybe that’s the answer…

[deccard]

dunno if that´s your problem but the worst thing u can do is write with a normal permanent marker on a cd. it will destroy the cd over time. there are special cd markers.
i have this problem with my old divx cd´s. couldn´t watch an old movie and it has seen my cdrom drive only 2 times.

[c s]

how old was it? i never used special pens and never had problems - so far. as long as the cds are not silver on the "a-side" there's a layer to write on, i thought?

[deccard]

hm my was about 1 1/2 years and the layer to write on was silver i guess.
so if its silver its not protected...argh

[4md]

Which just leaves you with the question of hard drive failure and what happens when the 20gig hard drive on my iPod packs up after 2 years, not only have you lost your music, but these things cost over £400. Maybe the only answer is to have both – but don’t use the CDs – simply have them has back up.

That's what I do ... think it's the best solution ...The i-pod is a marvellous toy and I always got it on me

[c s]

hmm i guess i sometimes also wrote on silver discs, but the more important data is on verbatims etc. - luckily... perhaps you shouldn't even use special pens on silver surface?

[deccard]

i never used special pens. i didn´t know that till some time ago. frightens me.
time to make a backup of the backup of the backup.

[DaFunction]

CD´s are not for the eternity and every mark with pens and scratches are death for it.
I think you used normal CD media. Try out special Audio CD´s.

To mark we use special cd labels and our cd´s are ok, but we only use CD for promotion and not to secure our work.
Use a MiniDisk Player to archive your audio work or better use a DAT. And don´t archive once....secure it so often (thanks to deccard) you can on different media and everything is ok.
Thats the way we do it, and it works up to now.

Behind this link (http://www.pctechguide.com/08cdrom2.htm#The_disc) you can find some facts about CD´s, how it works and what tricks you can use.

[deccard]

Originally posted by DaFunction
I think you used normal CD media. Try out special Audio CD´s.



i thought the only difference is that for special audio cs´s you pay a gema fee and some copy bit is set so that hi-fi cdr burners
regocnize it as legit.
is the qualitiy better?

[c s]

from my and friends' experiences with dat tapes and dat recorders i'd definitely not suggest dat as backup media. not only does it take forever to record music from computer to dat in realtime (compared to cd burning), but also dat tape mechanisms are known for failures. also, to back up data to dat you need a streamer, to back up music you need a dat recorder - both quite expensive. also the prices of streamer and dat tapes are exorbitant compared to cd. so i'd rather burn multiple cds like i do now and perhaps copy it later. with dvd burners coming up it will be nice to re-compile cds on one piece of media anyway. md is not an option for recording i guess, as long as it cannot store music uncompressed.

[c s]

Originally posted by deccard
i thought the only difference is that for special audio cs´s you pay a gema fee and some copy bit is set so that hi-fi cdr burners
regocnize it as legit.

me too. the burning method is exactly the same (red book).

[DaFunction]

you are right, the burning method is the same, but they have a better coating.
There are not many factorys on this planet who manufactured blank´s , but i know that the quality waste is sold on "no name" labels.
Buy quality media and don´t save on the wrong end.

[grobelaar]

I think the hard drive is becoming the most reliable and efficient - several of these methods involve a lot of work - and its simply time I don't have - I think I might look into some sort of hard drive back up system, and keep my music on the computer - hmm iPod, so expensive though..

Haven't really considered this root, cos the 6gb hard drive on my Mac is so small by today's standards.

I think this is a problem for a lot of computer users these days, hard drives are so big and people have so much stored on them. There's always a regular supply of people who suffer hard drive meltdowns and lose all their data - specially you PC boys (Macs seem to be kinder on hard drives - or maybe its just cos there aren't as many of us whinging - I've never seen a hard drive in a mac fail... (maybe I'm just lucky...)

I think someone could make some money coming up with a decent cost effective product to solve this - even if its just having another hard drive and back-up software, hard drives are cheap, its just convincing people that they need to to double up...

[databombers]

maybe a quick, cheap, temp fix to the problem would be zip. zip drives are cheap now, so u could back everything up on zip and burn loads of cd's (which u can loose or damage?) untill u can afford such treats as a ipod?

[alex cortex]

Originally posted by grobelaar
I think someone could make some money coming up with a decent cost effective product to solve

a former student of my father invented data storage on adhesive tape... "i´ll be back in five minutes - just buying a hard drive at the supermarket, want one too? it´s only 2,50..."

[JE:5]

Moral of the story? Don't buy cheap ones!

[deccard]

what about dvd-r? burners and mediums are getting cheaper.
how save is the data?

[marcel]

oh, shit thats new to me.
so eddings are not good on cds,eh? shit

[phil]

backup to cassette and put it in a sandwich bag in a house of fraiser bag under your bed. perfect.

[MUX]

i got a dvd-rw and its pretty amazing.. u can put up to 4.7 gigs on one disk. i bought it beacuse of my xbox, but it comes pretty handy when i want to handle data/media.

[c s]

Originally posted by MUX
i got a dvd-rw and its pretty amazing

argh give it to me, now! i want one too!

[piscaries]

burning onto cd's and dvd's will be the best for long-term storage. you just have to make sure that if you really want to preserve your files that you keep them somewhat environmentally controlled (don't expose to tons of moisture, keep the ambient temp as stable as possible). if you use any type of magnetic media (HD, tape, floppies, zips, etc) then your data will be safe but in time the earth's magnetic field will eventually start to mess up the media. but it takes a while for things to get messed up, and i think more dense media (like HD's and zips) take longer to demagnetize than thinner media (like tape). whatever you do, don't use jazz 2gig drives... ever! i have actually gotten imation to admit that they are pieces of shit (the read heads actually touch the disk surface!).