I had to burn a CD-R last night. I rarely do it, maybe twice a year. I located the old 50 pieces tower, which was sitting in a shady shelf inside the flat, cover still there to keep dust away from the content.
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| Left: not working. Right: ok. |
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The first CD I picked was not recognised by the laptop CD-ROM reader/writer (made in 2004). It looked empty, but it was late and I moved forward to the CD sitting in the second place from the top. First thing I noticed was they had a different color: the topmost Sony 700 MB silver CD-R made in Malesia in 2003 was looking gold-ish (oxydated?), while all other positions retained the expected color.
Needless to say, the normal-looking-color CD-R was recognized, written and verified correctly. A second copy (3rd topmost position in the tower) was equally successfull.
Most of my recorded CD's at home come from the same tower so I will inspect them, compare colors and read the data.
So far I can conclude that a 9 years old virgin CD-R is still good for storing new data.
