Quality, price and life
CD-Rs all look more or less the same -- shiny,
nicely made, nice logo, nice package. You
can buy some of them for practically nothing
-- $20 for a hundred, with a $20 rebate,
for example. Others may cost $50 for a hundred.
It's tempting to think that one brand is
as good as another when you don't have much
to go by but appearances. Even brand names
can be seriously misleading.
CD-R quality does correlate with price though
-- at least to some extent. (You
probably
knew that, eh?) Some of the cheaper
CD-Rs
fail to last a few months, let
alone years.
The best ones may last 100 years
or more
(properly stored -- cool, dry
and dark).
Besides price -- which may mislead
-- how
can you tell the good ones from
the others?
One thing you can do is make
sure you get
the premium line of the brand,
for example,
"Datalife Plus" by
Verbatim.
Probably the best thing you can do to find
quality CD-Rs is read the test
results you
can find online. The tests are
designed to
accelerate aging, so they aren't
exactly
equivalent to putting them on
the shelf for
100 years, but they do give a
good basis
for comparison. Here's a few
places that
give information on life:
http://www.cdrfaq.org/ -- home page for the CD-R FAQ (frequently
asked questions)
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-5 -- specific section on how long CD-Rs last
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/ -- site devoted to *everything* about CD-Rs
and DVD-Rs
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_quality.shtml -- specific information on CD-R quality.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15800263 -- article on CD-R life by Fred Langa
Here's a table of the best brands that I
extracted from CD Media World.
| Actual Manufacturer |
Brands |
| Mitsui Chemicals |
HP, Mitsui, Philips & Sony |
| Taiyo Yuden |
Taiyo Yuden, 3M, Sony, Philips, Boeder &
Imation |
| TDK |
3M, Pioneer, TDK & Yamaha |
| Kodak Japan |
BASF & Kodak |
| Pioneer Video |
Pioneer |
| Ricoh |
KAO & Ricoh |
Other factors
Competition has induced manufacturers to
try to extend the capacity of
CD-Rs. They
started out at 650 MB / 70 minutes,
and most
are now 700 MB / 80 minutes.
The good ones
are still good at this larger
size, but 750
MB / 90 minutes is going too
far.
The quality of your CD-R drive is another
factor of course. If yours came with your
computer, you may not even know what brand
it is. Yamaha, Ricoh, Plextor, TDK, and Sony
are some of the better ones.
Don't bother with CD-RWs. They are going
to become unreadable some day. right in the
middle of something you're doing. It's happened
to me more than once.
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