This is something that has me worried for some time now. I've read somewhere that the life expectancy of a burned CD-R is somewhere between 5 and 10 years, after which due to chemical processes the data carrying layer of the disc corrodes and quality or data loss occurs.

It's hard to find information about the life expectancy of commercially pressed compact discs and how it differs from CD-R. As a CD album collector I am of course worried about loss of functionality of my collected records and am considering to make lossless backups, though hard drives tend to be fragile and prone to data loss as well. There doesn't seem to be a more or less permanent solution right now that doesn't involve periodical data migration.

CDs are a relatively young medium, so naturally the problem hasn't manifested itself to the majority of consumers, including me. This board is full of record collectors though so I'd like to know if anyone of you experienced data loss on their compact disks or has knowledge about if and how the different processes of pressing and burning result in differences in durability. This isn't supposed to be limited to CDs though, any experience with other record media like vinyl or tapes is appreciated as well. Also: Do you make backups and if yes, how do you go about it? Are there any prospects of digital storage media with indefinite durability being availiable (/affordable?) any time soon?

i have 10 year old burned cds that are fine, i'd heard that too but it can't be true [any more]
mastered cds possibly will last even longer, my oldest cd is about 30 years old

I know we covered this in another thread with more detailed time specs and links to them. Basically you shouldn't really worry about anything if you care for your items. I have cd-rs that are even older than 10 years from stuff i backed up off my computer that all play fine. I know it was some specific brands/run of cd-rs that degraded much quicker. And out of everything, cd-rs, tapes, cds, and dvds... tapes were the worse.

It really depends on the medium.

I have CD-Rs that stopped working in regular CD players just months after they were burned. They can still be read by a computer though, which seems true in most cases (but not all).

I have never had problems with a factory recorded CD, but my oldest ones are from the late 1990s I think.

I have seen open reel tape turn hard and crumble, but I guess it also has to do with how it was stored, exposure to air, etc. The same surely applies to cassette tapes, and also tapes that have been played a lot sound bad. Sometimes cassettes get stuck (never had that problem with new ones though), which can sometimes be fixed by putting a new enclosure.

Vinyl doesn't go bad if it just sits there, as long as there's no heavy weights on top of it or excessive heat. It does sound worse the more it's played though.

My copy of Raining Blood is from 1986, making it 26 years old. Still looks new and plays like new so I don't really believe in CD's having a noticeable shelf life (although they probably do over a greater time span)

I know that factory pressed CDs can last for at least 30 years. I have a 30 year old copy of The Number of the Beast that plays perfectly. I also know that certain manufacturing plants have produced CDs in the past that are more prone to decomposing. I cannot remember any examples at the moment, but I'm sure there is information regarding the matter posted online somewhere. From experience, I have noticed that CD-Rs are more fragile than their factory pressed counterparts. I haven't really been observant enough to say more than that, though.

As for records, My oldest one was pressed in 1969. It plays pretty well, but with a bit of surface noise. I have no reason to believe that records kept in storage and not played would deteriorate on their own if cared for properly. I don't know much more than that because my all of my older records were purchased second hand, so I have no way of knowing how many times they have been played prior to my owning them. I do know that both records and tapes are prone to degradation because both reproduce sounds physically. From what I have observed, tapes deteriorate the quickest of all media - I suppose the fact that they are generally the cheapest kind of makes up for that...

Overall, if there is an album that you would like to spin on an everyday basis, I would suggest purchasing it more than once instead of letting one item accumulate all of that play time. This should allow you to keep your collection is a non-degraded condition for as long as you'll probably need to worry about it.

Also: If you are buying new albums and you have the option to purchase LPs of greater mass, I would recommend shelling out the extra dollar or two because heavier albums allow for deeper grooves that in turn extend the shelf-life of the record if you plan on playing it very often.

I left a record near a window and because of how hot it gets here, the vinyl actually melted within a few hours. Keep them in dry cool places and they should be fine for decades.

Of course, data loss over time in .mp3 occurs naturally no matter what condition they're kept in- even on hard drives.

don't you just cringe when you see cds and records laying around on the ground/carpet/table etc
oh and you live in the desert, i'm surprised your jeep doesn't melt in your driveway ha ha

It does have trouble starting sometimes when it gets too hot

I'm pretty sure that statistic is outdated. They've found better ways of sealing and manufacturing CD within the last decade or so. So, nobody know just how long these better CD's will last, but estimates are supposed to show that they'll double shelf life. Read it in an article somewhere. Anyways, CD's typically last longer anyways as long as you take care of them. Some people just seem to have the bad touch when it comes to technology breaking... always needing replacement CD's, cell phones, Xbox 3-wait... Nah those just break all the time.

they're all made from different stuff now, records used to be made from actual vinyl but not for a long time.
i play my cds and records and don't worry about it, there's more chance of dropping the thing and damaging it than it degrading over time, that's why we have represses and reissues

Fuck new album art and re-recorded songs though

I saw the re-issue of Kraftwerk's Autobahn, with the altered album art the last time I was at Amoeba and they wanted like sixty dollars for it. First, the origional isn't that hard to find. Second, shouldn't reissues be cheaper? I mean, maybe if it was the original with a misprint or something on it yeah, but that's just outrageous.

yeah i don't like it when they change stuff either

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. If you engrave binary code into steel for example, that statement isn't true for the next couple thousand years. Of course hard drives lose data during the process of writing, but if you rip to a lossless format like Flac, keep several backups and do checksum verification every time you do a backup, I think that problem can be minimized to a point where this is actually a far safer option than a CD.

getting drunk and deleting stuff or playing god with your partitions then 'forgetting' you had all your music on that one, don't laugh, we've all done it

This is true- .flac is the best option if your making back ups(if you have a large enough hard drive). Still though, .mp3 files will eventually degrade over time due to various stimuli unless you use a solid state hard drive or something.

Holy shit, I thought CDs only came around in the early 0's.

Nah, I read that Billy Joel's "The Nylon Curtain" album was one of the first albums to be put on cd, back in 1982.

As for me, I own plenty of cd's that I bought used in the 90's that still play perfectly. Cd-r's aren't as durable though, and they seem to get scratched up much easier. I have plenty of burns that are completely unreadable/unplayable from constant use.

Before the mid 90's, I mainly had tapes. And tapes will always wear out with use. That's why I re-bought all my favorite cassette albums on cd. Of course there are albums that are rare on cd and plentiful on tape. In which case, I'll spend the $1 to get the tape.

What.

Anyways, my father has CDs approaching their 30s, they all work totally fine. Its kinda cool reading old CD booklets which explain what a CD is and how to care for one.

Thats completely ridiculous

You've been trolled. Its impossible for data to degrade unless your method of storage is degrading itself. You you say "even on harddrives" thats because harddrives degrade overtime, as they have physical, moving componants. MP3's cannot degrade unless other software on your PC is further compressing them without your knowledge. With cloud software and the internet, it is, again, impossible for MP3's to degrade, just as its impossible for a downloaded movie to degrade, or my oploaded copy of Baudler's Gate.

Did you read any of these by chance?





They are both troll posts

I hope that's not what iAm meant. Binary code is binary code, information doesn't just vanish for no reason. This thread is supposed to collect facts on physical causes for data loss in record media, not make-believe to scare technophobes. (Don't get me wrong VHSDVD123, this is in no way directed against your post)

MP3 data loss over time is impossible just as VHSDVD123 wrote (trust me, I'll be a software engineer ). CD-Rs and DVD-Rs made these days are total crap, even had problems with "quality" ones (like Verbatim). For audio FLAC is a great option if you want to preserve everything but I didn't have any problems with 160 kpbs WMAs (which I use on my PC since MP3s are worse on the same bitrate and I have limited HDD capacity). Live DVDs are just made ISO (sometimes NRG) files of for backup, sometimes converted into Nero Digital AVC (mp4) for smaller size (and to be put on YouTube), but that's also a lossy format. Totally depends on your tolerance for lossiness.

People still fall for that mp3 degradation shit?

It's no myth. Even text files can loose data over a period of time if they are frequently being moved from one storage medium to another.

if it's important, you'll have 3 copies of it

Not trying to call you out or anything, but what do you mean exactly? And can you provide a source?

It doesn't have anything to do with it being mp3 though. Storage writing errors affect any kind of data.

That Billy Joel album was actualyl pressed in 1981, but only released in Japan. 82 was the US release date.


As for CD-Rs, I have stuff that was burned over a decade ago that still plays and sounds fine. I have CDs dating to 1983, my father has stuff from 1982, and all of them still play flawlessly. As for records, I have some 78s from the 1920s that play fine.

Everything, of course, degrades over time, from media, to shoes, and people. Will your CD-R stop working? Maybe. If it takes 35 years for a CD-R to stop working, then so be it. How old are you now? 15? 20? Do you still think you will even give a shit if that CD-R is working when you are 50? If the answer is yes, then burn a copy every 10 years.

By the way, some of the mp3s which are actually sold on the internet can only be copied about 3 or 4 times, if at all.

The silver/shiny/painted/bit where the data is on my copy of Chaos AD started to peel after I'd owned the CD for about 10 years. I don't *think* I stored it badly in any way, and I know it's happened to a couple of my other CDs (but not others) so some CDs can be badly-made, I guess. I went 100% mp3 a few years back now anyway - I still buy the occasional CD, but only to rip it. Gave my CD collection away and just have a HDD with all my old albums on it. Takes up less space, looks less cool.... but eh.

Dude, just... shut up. You're talking complete bollocks.

That's DRM. It's a bit more complicated than you make it sound like, and those files are NOT proper mp3 files, because mp3 files can played wherever and copied as often you want, so the DRM depends on these files only being playable with certain DRM compatible players, but let me tell you that converting them to real mp3 files isn't a big deal afaik.