The CD-Rs I burned years ago are approaching their danger zone — a lifespan of around 10 years

【On the Lifespan and Durability of Optical Disc Media】
CD-R｜Pressed CD/DVD｜I Still Love Physical Media

One more thing — back around 1995–2000, when recording to CD-R was quietly fashionable in Hi-Fi circles, I had made a great many digital recordings of NHK-FM classical programmes, radio shows featuring voice actresses of the time such as Sakura Tange, and various anime-related radio content, using a MARANTZ CDR630 and a Pioneer PDR-D5. All of that recorded data was lost entirely — wiped clean — in the NAS HDD logical crash…

And yet — when I went looking, it turned out that all of those FM air-check recordings had been kept on their original CD-Rs, sitting forgotten in a corner of a bookshelf! But it was a little too soon to feel relieved. When I tried playing back these long-stored CD-Rs… oh dear. Several were already struggling to be read, skipping about, and the outlook was looking decidedly grim…

Can music CD-Rs aged 15–20 years still be read? SONY, TDK, Taiyo Yuden, Maxell, AXIA

All the data lost in the NAS crash had been burned to CD-R somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago. In my own environment, CD-Rs from SONY, TDK, and Taiyo Yuden could all be ripped without errors using Exact Audio Copy. On the other hand, the old Victor-branded discs were completely dead — nothing but noise — and the Maxell discs were behaving very suspiciously, with some taking several hours per disc just to finish ripping without errors.

And then there was the FUJIFILM AXIA green CD-R media — the AXIA CD-R PRO for Audio 80 — which at the time had been marketed as a premium “high-quality audio-dedicated CD-R”. It had become completely unreadable. I had trusted it. Even when I originally made those discs, readback on the Nakamichi head unit had seemed rather laboured, and I did recall looking at that conspicuously deep green dye and thinking — compared with other brands, is the reflectivity on this really going to be alright? — but still. Maaya Sakamoto’s LUCY was lost, which is a shame… though since I had never let go of the original CD, I was safe there at least.

PHILIPS CD-Rs burned on a PHILIPS drive

The PHILIPS SILVER PREMIUM CD-R — Japan-made, and hugely popular at the time for sound quality among PHILIPS/MARANTZ users — is mostly still fine, though one disc that a friend had copied for me on a different setup took an extraordinarily long time to rip.

That particular disc was burned on the PHILIPS CDR560S — a consumer-oriented budget model based on the MARANTZ CDR630 — so I do wonder whether it might be a question of burn quality. The PHILIPS/MARANTZ CD-R recorders of that era were all made in the same Belgian factory. Both the PHILIPS CDR560S and the MARANTZ CD-R630 use exactly the same drive mechanism, the high-quality CDM36 (CDL3610/01) die-cast transport.

Victor-branded CD-Rs — total loss… That’s (Taiyo Yuden) — survived

As for the old Victor-branded CD-Rs that had completely failed, it happened that they were all rips of anime song rental CDs from the time, and fortunately most of those titles can now be picked up secondhand for next to nothing. Early Japan Victor CD-Rs had polycarbonate that was noticeably thinner than other brands, and the recording layer dye was pale too — it had always looked rather unpromising — and sure enough, the results were exactly what you might expect from buying cheap. For the record, all of these are Japan-made 650MB/74-minute CD-R media.

Speaking of which — Taiyo Yuden, long beloved under the “That’s” brand as a flagship name in high-quality Japanese optical media, apparently announced its complete withdrawal from the optical disc business, including Blu-ray, at the end of 2015. Alongside that, Victor Advanced Media — which had been a subsidiary — was also to exit the business.

～ Summary ～

To summarise: for CD-Rs stored indoors under normal conditions, a safe working lifespan of around 10 years seems to be a reasonable guide. Beyond that, results vary considerably depending on the original manufacturing quality of the disc. The same is likely to apply to the BD-R libraries people are busily burning today (note: BD-R apparently has a shorter expected lifespan than DVD-R), so when purchasing BD-Rs for archival purposes, it is probably wise to stick to Japan-made discs from reputable manufacturers that are known to be compatible with your drive. And at some point — with 10 years as a rough target — it would be worth thinking now about moving everything across to whatever high-quality BD-R format exists in the future…

※ Whether long-stored CD-Rs can be successfully ripped using Exact Audio Copy depends greatly on the original burn quality, storage conditions, the drive used, and the specific model and production lot of the CD-R media. The results described above are purely individual occurrences that arose within the author’s own specific environment, and this article should not be taken as a demonstration of quality differences between manufacturers for CD-Rs produced at that time.

Continued in How long do pressed CDs and DVD media actually last?

【On the Lifespan and Durability of Optical Disc Media】
CD-R｜Pressed CD/DVD｜I Still Love Physical Media

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