CD-Rs only last for two years
 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=513486

Ever decreasing circles
You know those CD-Rs that you've trusted your most precious memories to? They could be little more use than coasters after just two years. Michael Pollitt investigates

I heard some of this on "Tech TV" a while back, and found the information to be rather dissapointing.

But. . . go figure. . . my daughter has burned music cd's floating around in her car, front seat, visor trunk etc. . . not a coaster in the bunch. I put one in "safe storage", and it's a UFO.

EMTEC/BASF

I went to make a DVD from my 2001 master . It had holes in it!
I will never buy emtec again. I am still upset

I've had quite a few CD-Rs fail with CRC errors that I received from other or burned myself on a Teac 2x SCSI burner in 1999.
They were stored properly on a spindle in my closet. On all,
I've been able to see the files (directory intact), but have been
unable to copy the files to hard disk.

I am starting to worry about the longetivity of my collection. Damn. I hate making backups of backups. At least now, we can burn about 10 CD-Rs onto a single DVD-R.

I hope the industry responds with a new CD format with significantly more bits for error correction. Most of my CD-Rs
are only partially filled, so I wouldn't mind waiting an extra three minutes or so for the entire disk to be filled.

Sad news considering the longevity of film stored in the same conditions.