Kodak Gold CD-R's going bye-bye?

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Tue Jul 24 17:12:16 2001

Sellam Ismail said:
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Carlini, Antonio wrote:
>
> > Personally, I have only had one read-failure in several hundred burns.
> > That's not counting a few coasters along the way - this was a partial
> > read-failure some six months to a year later when I came to use the
> > CD.
>
> Wait ten or twenty years, and then make your assessment. That's what Tim
> is concerned with.

And a test I use - a carbon-arc-lamp nicknamed "buttercup". (If there
are any ex-Dabney-House readers here, they'll get the reference.) I can
only run it intermittently, but all cyanine-based CD-R's become unreadable
after a few hours of 10% exposure to it. (I think a few hours is somewhere
around a decade of solar UV exposure.)

The CompUSA-super-duper cheapies (CMC Magnetics by the ATIP code) become
unreadable after just a few minutes. I think these use the cyanine dye
without any stabilizers at all.

I've melted pthalocyanine-based CD-R's (Kodak Ultima and Mitsui Gold) by
putting them too close to the arc, but never damaged the data otherwise :-)

Of course, two seconds in the microwave on "high" completely destroys them
*all*!

Tim.
Received on Tue Jul 24 2001 - 17:12:16 BST