Cheap CD's & DVD's - Warning

[scsijon]

Just a little warning on the cheapest cd's and dvd's that are appearing out there.

If you check their manufacturers guarantees (not the brand which varies) through their id's (found in the centre circle), it seems that a lot of them only have a recorded life (life before degredation starts to ocurr to the recording / playback surface) of 90 or 180 days instead of 1yr plus. Some also list a max use of 100 cycles of use to and not the normal 200,000.

They might be ok longer, but..... beware for your best stuff!

Especially as i've lately seen "no-name" blank cd's down to $A10 per pack of 50 and dvd's at $A15 per pack of 50, and both in fancy carrier boxes like the better ones have.

And with 64gig memory sticks at around $A50-60, ...

[Ted Dog]

Sonys DVD+RW also cause me concern, far less bit life and rewrite cycles then I would have ever expected. If you want to save data use R only, if you need to have it longer than 4 to 5 years use M-discs brand for 1000 years (so they claim ) I lose about 2 to 5 percent of my live cd/dvds per year for stuff from 2005 etc. I haven't lost a bluRay RW or R disc yet but one B-RE gives me write problems, so its marked. I also started to md5sum my files when I backup to optical.
Thanks for the warning I opened a 100 pkg I got last year of brand name DVDs and the top one would not take a write, looks kinda transparent giving me problems, like not being seen at boot etc.


http://www.mdisc.com/m-ready/

its cool they have firmware links on the bottom of page.. I have two models listed.

[Semme]

Word! >> Don't throw your players out.. VHS tapes outlast'm all.

[Ted Dog]

Everybody knows the Sony BetaMax was better... still have some tapes, and a reel to reel, my 8track collection, tube quadiphonic cat-eye tuner multiband receiver.
The optical drive(s) has been the only back word useful devices in my lifetime. My 1984 CDs would still play if I could find them.. 30yrs ...

[rufwoof]

Word! >> Don't throw your players out.. VHS tapes outlast'm all.

Even ticker tape?

NeXT decided to design a custom PCB from scratch to facilitate the easy reading of ticker tape. Handy as it is somewhat difficult to buy a working paper tape reader at a reasonable price.

Ticker tape was used since 1870, but went into decline during/after the 1970's. (I'm old enough to recall telex machines clunking away).

[Ted Dog]

I used to sale ticker tape programs in the basement of the Science/Technology snackbar for classmates to test the hardware setups BEFORE turning their Electronic Engineering for evaluation, Got semi-busted when someone used my programing to show the professor setup his test wrong. Prof. did not know my skill level so did not believe I did it to him I was sealing someone else work as my own and was cheating them and my classmates.
We had a rocky relationship till and past he retired.. ( he got revenge on me, and I on him to prove it) , lasted well after he left and was a mini scandal of the type you do not expect from jr college.
Two other programs and project he thought I also stole, ( because no body in a jr. college could/would write such programs according to him ) He nor others could find other examples... I wrote a machine language program to calculate Pi to half the size of memory in digits, hundred of pages worth (stopped at 20 due to lack of text books available to make it that far ) and a 6502 assembler/disassembler with a timed single step method, also not found elsewhere (in 2K, yes K it was a tight fit )

[scsijon]

Ted Dog, sounds like you played as I did in the early 70's. I had a 6800D2 kit 'slightly' souped up with added memory (128byte8bit 24pin static ram chips), a 8" SSSD floppy, a basic Parallel port for a telytype printer, and a mechanical 5/8bit tape punch/reader (ex data telytype and initially used before I got the floppy) all added via a patchboard. Wierd punch as it had 3 sets of holes, top was 8bit punch, middle was for reading either, bottom was for 5bit punch. It's all in my boxes of hardware archive, really should throw them out, but.....
And they wonder why my storage shed is an old church!

However, back on topic, i'be been sent a box (100+) mixed brand new cd's to try out for a 'shopperson' I know who saw this thread. I'll give you a rough outcome when I finish, detailed is to him only as he's paying for it.

And yes, the best was my old punched cards, equalled 1 line 75/80 colums per card.

[Burn_IT]

Paper and Mylar tape were nasty stuff.
I've got more sliced fingers from those than I have from cheap PC cases.

As for punched cards, have you heard of the floor sort, or the Leicester shuffle??

[scsijon]

As for punched cards, have you heard of the floor sort, or the Leicester shuffle??

Yes to both, and we used 300 boxes of them as confettie from the sixth floor roof above the computer centre when we turned off and disconnected the last reader at Uni.

Was a windy day too, vice-chancellor was upset and we got told off. Great fun though .

They reckon they were still finding cards magically appearing on campus four years later.

[fuelish]

Just a little warning on the cheapest cd's and dvd's that are appearing out there.

They might be ok longer, but..... beware for your best stuff!

Especially as i've lately seen "no-name" blank cd's down to $A10 per pack of 50 and dvd's at $A15 per pack of 50, and both in fancy carrier boxes like the better ones have.

And with 64gig memory sticks at around $A50-60, ...

You get what you pay for.

If it’s too good [cheap] to be true it probably is.

Which leads me to wonder at what age do people learn these things, or maybe some never learn?

I’m tempted by price too but I have to take a deep breath and remember that products from china at ridiculous prices only result in buyer remorse.