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Reliability of DVDs?


roshan

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Over the past few days Ive been burning lots of files on to DVDS. Yesterday I popped some old CDs that I had burned into my DVD drive, however, all of them are empty! I could have sworn that 2 years ago, there was something on those CDs.

 

What is the reason that my CDs have become empty? Could they have been ruined by heat or magnetism, or do CDs naturally lose their data after a year or so? Do DVDs have the same problem?

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Damn, I bought a bunch of Tesco DVDs, which now contain lots of important data that I have nowhere else to store. :blink: Ive bought a case for them though, so scratches shouldnt be a problem.

 

Is there any chance of DVDs just randomly losing data?

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I work in a place that archives lots and lots of CD's. They won't touch DVD's with five foot pliers.

 

We have archived over 10,000 CD's full of data, and we make around 1,000 more per year..

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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I work in a place that archives lots and lots of CD's. They won't touch DVD's with five foot pliers.

 

We have archived over 10,000 CD's full of data, and we make around 1,000 more per year..

Er... for that kind of backup, using CDs (or DVDs) is bizarre. That's what tape backup and other professional solutions are for.

 

My personal experience is that DVDs are more reliable than CDs, but YMMV.

There are no doors in Jefferson that are "special game locked" doors. There are no characters in that game that you can kill that will result in the game ending prematurely.

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We have archived over 10,000 CD's full of data, and we make around 1,000 more per year..

But the question now would be: did you try to restore anything from backup/archive CDs?

The CD's are being kept in a cold storage without lights. Whenever a researcher wants to use any of the CD's, he hands us a request and we go get it for him, copy it to a new CD and let him borrow the new one. It's idiotic. And we do use other means of archiving too, of course. We use an Exabyte solution on the side, and we're also going to start using hard drives instead of CD's. Then when someone wants to borrow a few sounds from us, we lend them an MP3 player instead. Smarter.

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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We are still sitting on wax threads from 1890 (or something). Nothing gets lost in our institution.

Edited by mkreku

Swedes, go to: Spel2, for the latest game reviews in swedish!

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We are still sitting on wax threads from 1890 (or something). Nothing gets lost in our institution.

 

 

NASA should have hired you.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

 

- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

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How would imperfections in a disc cause it to lose data later? I can see it making it cagey to actually write the data, but lose it? Or are you saying such imperfections make them just unreadable? If the latter, I guess I can see that...would those disc resurfacing thingies be something to try, if you have nothing else to lose anyway?

 

I've never had any cd/dvd's become unreadable yet - burned or originals. My husband acts like they're coasters, but he hasn't had any lost data yet either. Guess we're just lucky so far.

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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Scratches on CD/DVDs cause problems with the laser reading the data (and probably writing too, if that ever were the case); this can be fixed with some metal polish to remove the scratches. This isn't the case with the next-gen Blu-Ray-/HD-DVDs, however, as the data is laid so close to the surface that a "normal" scratch could quite easily damage the data layer. Apart from that there have been cases of incompatibilities though this is typically between different early adopter technology implementers' hardware.

OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS

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OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT

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I looked briefly into the HD-DVD units when TV shopping, but didn't realize the discs were more fragile in that manner. Makes me glad I didn't get one. That and the tech still feels too new...I'll wait and see where it goes.

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
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I wouldn't call it a show-stopper, but certainly the tech is too new to pick a horse just yet. (I wouldn't be surprised if another, as yet unknown, technology comes out ahead in the near future ... though that would take a large disruption in the electronic consumer goods market place!).

OBSCVRVM PER OBSCVRIVS ET IGNOTVM PER IGNOTIVS

ingsoc.gif

OPVS ARTIFICEM PROBAT

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