Audio CD-Rs going bad... collectors feel my pain

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May 12, 2002
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#21
this brings me to the question what lasts the longest of the available options? hard-drives, usb drives, cdr, dvdr?
I am a professional computer nerd by day... unprofessional music nerd by night... I can give my opinion about the different options for archiving.

As far as affordable and easy-to-find, HTL (high to low) BD-R discs should be the best option. They use inorganic layers (copper + silicon) which get fused together by the laser when you burn. It should be immune to light and environmental factors and last a long time. The best ones I have found at a good price are SmartBlu brand. They are less than a dollar for a 25GB disc.

Most CD-R and DVD+/-R discs use synthetic organic compounds for the burning layer, which means light, temperature, humidity etc. will cause it to degrade over time, and it also degrades on its own regardless of how well you treat it. The factories that used to make those discs switched to making LTH (low to high) BD-R discs which also use the same organic materials in the burning layers. (LTH BD-R discs are also the cheaper and more common ones).

A company called MAM-A (formerly Mitsui) specializes in archival-grade discs of all kinds. They literally use 24k gold for the burning layer on their discs. They have been around forever and are usually considered the best quality brand. They claim their discs last longer than any other storage format, other than paper... I think they are usually a few dollars per disc. If you can afford it that is probably the way to go.

There are also special DVD's called M-Disc which claims to last 1,000 years. The data is burned into a rock-like layer. They claim to have done all kinds of tests like dipping the disc into liquid nitrogen and it still works after they thaw it. They are hard to find and you need a special drive to be able to burn them. Their website has too much "Salesman speak" for me... I don't know if I really believe their claims. Check back in 1,000 years and we can find out...

Hard drives are hit and miss, because they are made up out of mechanical parts and circuitry they will fail randomly. And the discs themselves are magnetic which can fade over the years. I have some old floppy discs from the 80's which still work and I have a hard drive that was just made this year and it already crashed. So you never know. I use a USB hard drive for making backups of my computer every couple weeks, just so I have something backed up in case my computer dies, but I wouldn't expect it to work in 10 years.

SSD, USB flash drives and memory cards can get zapped dead by the slightest power surge or static electricity... and sometimes they just go bad for no apparent reason. They are fine for every day use if you have backups, but I would not trust them for any long-term archival storage.

Computer backup tapes are flaky and I never had good luck with them... The backups they do at work are always failing because of the tapes being bad. You usually need to use special software and finding a computer with a working tape drive and that same software 10+ years later is probably going to be difficult.

Not that I am good about doing it myself... obviously... but if your data is truly irreplaceable and important you should make at least 2 different backup copies onto different formats of media. And probably re-copy those copies to new discs (or whatever you are using) every 4 or 5 years just to be sure they aren't going bad.
 
May 12, 2002
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#23
My CD-R recovery has taken a detour thanks to another disaster... the toilet tank broke open while I was out of the house, it kept trying to fill the tank constantly, flooding water all through the first floor and down into basement where my music collection was. Water directly poured down on my vinyl collection shelves ruining hundreds of records... My laptop also got hit, it had water coming out of it when I picked it up. They had to tear out the carpets, ceiling, walls, etc.

My CDs and tapes were mostly unharmed, some of the CDs on the lower shelves near the floor got wet jewel cases but I think it was mostly water splashing out of the puddles in the carpeting, and not directly pouring onto them. I have not had a chance to inspect them yet.

I lost a lot of other stuff too but as far as music the vinyl damage was really bad...

But it could have been worse... as somebody said to me that night... "At least it was clean water and not raw sewage".
 
May 12, 2002
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#25
Looks like the records on the lower shelves got really wet, about 150-200 were totally soaked, stuck togtether, getting moldy. All the covers and sleeves for those are in the trash now. Including my entire Too Short collection since it was at the end of the alphabet, bottom of the shelf... Some of the ones on the higher shelves were dry or only got splashed on a little bit, some warping of the cover but not totally ruined. Some of them seem perfectly fine.

The records themselves should be okay, as far as listening to, but they need to be cleaned because they have water stains on them, but otherwise should survive... Having no covers kills the collectible value (for the ones that had covers anyway) so my insurance should pay me something for them at least.

A few records were in those thick protective plastic sleeves, and I usually put them in with the opening on top, so those mostly survived unharmed except the ones that got water directly in them or had small holes in the seams. Even the ones that got wet did not stick and peel to the other records because of the plastic sleeve. So I'm definitely gonna buy a box of those and put everything valuable in them in the future.

I had some that were still sealed, unopened, but the shrinkwrap usually is not airtight, or has holes in it, so water got in them too. I had some sad moments of tearing off the shrinkwrap and throwing away the covers on some old unopened records.
 
Aug 26, 2002
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#27
My CD-R recovery has taken a detour thanks to another disaster... the toilet tank broke open while I was out of the house, it kept trying to fill the tank constantly, flooding water all through the first floor and down into basement where my music collection was. Water directly poured down on my vinyl collection shelves ruining hundreds of records... My laptop also got hit, it had water coming out of it when I picked it up. They had to tear out the carpets, ceiling, walls, etc.

My CDs and tapes were mostly unharmed, some of the CDs on the lower shelves near the floor got wet jewel cases but I think it was mostly water splashing out of the puddles in the carpeting, and not directly pouring onto them. I have not had a chance to inspect them yet.

I lost a lot of other stuff too but as far as music the vinyl damage was really bad...

But it could have been worse... as somebody said to me that night... "At least it was clean water and not raw sewage".
I feel your pain too. I had two big boxes of tapes, mostly bay area early to mid 90's stuff get destroyed in my mom's basement about 5 years ago. I had a bunch of stuff stored down there and she had a pump go out so they were basically sitting in water for about a week before anyone noticed. I still remember when she called me (i lived like 300 miles away at the time) and said some of my stuff got ruined but it was just some old tapes. I had to go hit the bar and drink away my hurt. I had her save them for me until I could check them out, but they were so moldy and fucked I had to throw them all out. Probably $2000-$3000 in todays prices. And of course no insurance.

About 10 years ago I lived in some real shady apartments and somehow someone shot through my cd case. So i had about 5-10 CD's with a fucking bullet hole in them, which basically just shattered the cases and broke the CD's. I was fucking pissed and threw them out. I should have kept them, it added to the gangsterness having gangsta rap CD's with bullet damage. Haha.
 
Aug 26, 2002
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#28
That just reminded me of another horror story for collectors. A guy I know got arrested for an old warrant or some bullshit. He had been caught cheating on his girl before, so when he wouldn't answer his phone that night she assumed he was out fucking around. So she broke all of his records. Like snapped them in fucking half. And this dude had a pretty sizable collection. So he gets out of jail and comes home to find all his records snapped in the front lawn. The fucked up thing is he is still with the girl.

Sorry to get all Gemini on the long story posts, but thought I should share.
 
Jun 22, 2013
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#32
Is getting our music insured under home insurance even possible?
How would they know the value of rare CDs when many aren't even posted for sale on the net.
 
Jul 12, 2002
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#37
Instead of Hard Drives, why not use cloud storage? If you store your collection in the cloud then it's gonna be on multiple servers, so if one server fails it's gonna be on others too so you don't have to worry.

If you can afford it, do cloud storage in combination with an external HD and that higher priced blank media you guys were talking about. Seems like it would be damn near impossible to lose your collection if you did all that.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#38
Instead of Hard Drives, why not use cloud storage? If you store your collection in the cloud then it's gonna be on multiple servers, so if one server fails it's gonna be on others too so you don't have to worry.

If you can afford it, do cloud storage in combination with an external HD and that higher priced blank media you guys were talking about. Seems like it would be damn near impossible to lose your collection if you did all that.
1. I have many terabytes of stuff, I am not aware of clouds that would take that for the cheap

2. Can you be sure the cloud will be there in 50 years time?

3. How reliable is it, and can you really trust strangers with your data?

4. Do you want others, let alone a corporate entity, to know what kind of things you're storing?

The cloud would be a good idea for backup if we lived in a different world. But in the world we live in, and especially after what we have been hearing about over the last 2 months, one should think twice about it
 
Jul 12, 2002
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#39
1. I have many terabytes of stuff, I am not aware of clouds that would take that for the cheap

2. Can you be sure the cloud will be there in 50 years time?

3. How reliable is it, and can you really trust strangers with your data?

4. Do you want others, let alone a corporate entity, to know what kind of things you're storing?

The cloud would be a good idea for backup if we lived in a different world. But in the world we live in, and especially after what we have been hearing about over the last 2 months, one should think twice about it
I see your points but we were talking about rips of rare rap albums, not super confidential personal information. You kinda jumped into a whole new discussion.

1. Yes that would get pricey with that amount of data. Dreamhost has a cloud storage promo going for $.04/gb storage per month. So you you'd be looking at around $40/month for 1tb. It also costs bandwidth when you want to download the data.

2. No, but if you choose a company that's been around awhile, before cloud storage, then it's pretty likely they will still be there 50 years from now in my opinion. My original response suggested a combination of having backups in 2 other forms in addition to the cloud storage in case the cloud were to fail or be terminated.

3. Very reliable. Cloud storage data is redundant across many servers worldwide. One server could get destroyed and that wouldn't matter because your data would be on like 10 more servers in different parts of the world. It's pricey because of the fact your data is stored in so many places.

4. You could always encrypt your data before uploading it to the cloud if privacy is a big concern.