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Can a CD lose its data for no reason?


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I put a CD into my computer drive, a CD that I made about five years ago, and it was still telling me to insert a CD into a drive. I took it out and tried it on two other CD players and neither recognized the CD. This CD was just fine the last time I listened to it. It's been in its case, stored with the rest of my CD's. It's not dirty that I can tell. Yesterday I put another home made CD into my drive and it sounded just awful. I tried it on other players and it seemed ok.

What can be the cause of this?

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I put a CD into my computer drive, a CD that I made about five years ago, and it was still telling me to insert a CD into a drive. I took it out and tried it on two other CD players and neither recognized the CD. This CD was just fine the last time I listened to it. It's been in its case, stored with the rest of my CD's. It's not dirty that I can tell. Yesterday I put another home made CD into my drive and it sounded just awful. I tried it on other players and it seemed ok.

What can be the cause of this?

the optics may be dirty. they sell cleaner disks which may help on the drive that didn't play any disks.

individual disks can deteriorate. manufacturing process might have been bad and the data layer is disappearing.

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Ok, maybe so. I wiped one off with my shirt and inserted it into the player, it recognized the amount of tracks, but still wouldn't play the CD.

Moisture and age can cause an optical disk to decay over time. I read it somewhere, probably wikipedia.

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Moisture and age can cause an optical disk to decay over time. I read it somewhere, probably wikipedia.

CUTE, but its WRONG!!!

The organic dye in a cheap CD-R/RW (or even burnable DVD) will break down over time simply because it isn't a stable compound. You can store some discs under optimal conditions, and it will still be garbage in a matter of years.

If the data is truly important, store it on archive quality discs.

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The manufactures used to say it will last a hundred years in the 1980's and everyone believed it.

Side note: I have over 100 LP's from the 1950's - 1980's and they work fine on my 1971 Sansui turntable. B)

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There's a big difference between the data on CDs you buy with music or software on them, and the CDs you burn at home yourself. Manufactured CDs where the data is "stamped" onto the CD are very stable and will lasty virtually forever if you take care of them. CD-Rs and CD-RWs, the kind you burn in your home PC, are much less stable and the data layer does break down over time. This is especially the case with some of the cheaper blank CDs you can buy.

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I did not know that.

Which brands of RW and R CD's would you recommend for future music burning if you're hoping to have them last for years to come?

From what I've read, the color of the data side is more important than the brand...supposedly gold colored discs are the most robust.

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