"JimH" wrote in message
oups.com...



Same here. I have never had a CD that I burnt fail yet, although I do
have to clean them once in a while after being handled a lot.

What theoretically is supposed to happen to the data burnt onto CD's
over time?


I don't know. The original music CD was simply a polycarbonate disk coated
with aluminum (done in a vacuum process called "sputtering" and then
protected with an overcoat of lacquer done in a spin process.

A CD-R differs in the respect that there is an additional layer of some type
of organic dye that reacts to the laser when writing data. I suspect that
it is the stability of the dye that has been exposed to the beam that
determines storage life.

I looked around the 'net and there are all kinds of opinions on storage life
ranging from a few years to over 100 years. Heat and humidity appears to be
the determining factors, other than physical abuse or damage.

Eisboch