So, you bought a CD burner when they first came out. Maybe it was like me, when they really
first came out and they were over $1000 with each blank running $10-$15.
If you did, and you don't know what I'm about to tell you, you are going to be sad.
Your burned CDs are disintegrating.
They won't play and there's no way to recover the data. Nope, no way to get that data back. I have CDs (and DVDs) from as recent as 2010 that are already unreadable. Placing labels on the discs seem to speed up the degradation, but not as much as writing with a sharpie does. A disc with no label beyond the factory stamp will break down, and the original estimates of 10 to 20 years archival storage were greatly exaggerated.
The Library of Congress has done some research, and unlike the problems with burned CDs, which tech geeks like me have known for years, the traditional "pressed" plastic factory CDs also have this trouble. In a test done by the LoC, twin copies of Paul Winter's Earthbeat were exposed to high heat and humidity for 500 hours to simulate aging. One copy was fine at the end of the test, but the other had oxidized to the point of being nearly clear! That clear copy had none of the material used for playback. None.
Even if you carefully stored your burned discs, chances are they will have difficulty being read in almost any drive. The formats have built-in error correcting code and applications like
dvdisaster exist to augment recovery efforts. However, these ECCs are no help against high amounts of degradation. According to the report, even the lasers involved in burning a disc can impact the longevity of the resulting CD or DVD.
This is a gentle reminder that backups on hard disk, the cloud or even magnetic tape are needed if you truly need to have access to data for the longterm.
More can be read over at
The Atlantic. Thanks to the always excellent
Adrienne LaFrance for her superb reporting on this. Be sure to check her out on
Twitter as well.
