"Eisboch" wrote in message
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"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


I don't know how old this article is, but it does list results from quality
testing of CD-R's from various manufacturers:

http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware..._quality.shtml