Flashback to the olden days -- DVD/CD coasters, anyone?

[oshunluvr]

For this first time in a really long time - needed a DVD-ROM. I have gone through a dozen DVD-R platters with no joy. However, my "coaster" supply has runneth over

Longer discussion: LG Blu-Ray DVD+RW drive. Nice drive with Lightscribe (which isn't supported anymore) - I've had it for 8 years or so. A couple years ago I went to an open case that didn't have a 5.25" drive mount. So I bought a nice drive enclosure that uses USB 3.0 to talk to the drive. Conveniently on my desk to the right an below my monitor and it's been fine when I've needed it. However, I can't remember the last time I had to burn something rather than just read.

After the third coaster came into being, I started trouble shooting - was it the media, the drive, the USB connection, the enclosure, the software I have changed USB cables, USB ports, removed it from the enclosure and connected it directly, tried CD-ROM instead of DVD-ROM, etc.

Finally, when connected to my server - no enclosure - rather than desktop, I was able to burn a data CD with success. Then I moved it back to the enclosure on the desktop machine and it failed to repeat. Then I swapped the USB cable for a new one and to a different port - and again success with a data CD. So I tried the DVD again and nada.

I looked over at the DVD platter stack - about 30 blanks left of the 50 on the spindle originally - and realized that spindle of blanks is at least 15 years old AND they're the lowest form of DVD-ROM - DVD-R. Seems likely that a large part of the issue is old media. The CDs are that old also, but way less density so maybe less affected by age? IDK, but I'm going to OfficeMax tomorrow and picking up some new DVD+RW disc blanks and trying again. Maybe I'll try a half-a-dozen more times and see if I catch a good one.

Wish me luck!

[GreyGeek]

Been there, done that.

In 1983 I sold my Apple ][+ and bought an IBM XT. I'm not sure exactly when but sometime later, probably around 1990, I bought a desktop which included a CDROM and began using it to save archival copies of my data. Some of my archival CDs go back about 30 years.

Several years ago (6,7, ) I moved from CD/DVD to USB and after doing so I removed the CDROM drive and replaced it with a HDCADDY, giving my old Acer three HD's internally. From 1990 until 2016, or so, I accumulated a collection of about 250 or so archival platters. When I decided to move to USB sticks I attempted to copy the contents of the CDs and DVDs to the USB sticks. Roughly 25-30% would not read. 50-70 platters. Some of the critical ones I attempted to recover by polishing the top surface with toothpaste and finishing off with banana (yes, the fruit). I made 4 or 5 recoverable. Most appeared to be oxidized from the edge or had strange growth in between the layers. Most of what I lost was old customer billing invoices I kept for financial reasons, source code of projects I coded for clients and myself, physics, math and program modeling projects, etc. I've been retired 14 years and probably most of my old clients have died or folded their businesses. So I doubt that any of those CD/DVDs will ever be read again. The 70% or so of the data I did recover from the CD/DVDs I moved into a BTRFS @DATA subvolume residing on two different external SSD drives.

I purchased a USB2 CDROM from Amazon for $14, about the time I took out the CDROM from my Acer, so I could have a CDROM to use in a pinch. I've probably used it half a dozen times in the last 6 years.

I watch few movies and don't store any, and the only music I listened to, before I began going deaf, is classical. Mozart, List, Beethoven, etc. And some of the better Beatles songs. Now, hearing aids do not amplify music very well so I don't listen to much music any more. I can hear high notes, so and exception, Amira Willighagen, sounds wonderful although the orchestra isn't quite all there.

As USB stick capacity and speed increases so does my use for them. And, SSD's keep increasing in speed and capacity and decreasing in price. My principal archival storage devices are two SSDs and a spinner, all residing in USB HDCADDY's, in addition to the 1 TB NVMe Samsung Pro 960 inside my laptop, which I used to make copies of @ residing on my 500Gb Samsung SSD.

My kids have already picked our garage clean of all its contents that they want, so this summer the CD/DVDs are going to follow the other now useless memorabilia of a lifetime into the dumpsters.

[Fred47]

I've been trying some other distros lately and since I have about 2 dozen DVDs I've been burning them. For some reason USB don't always work for me, so I take the slow and steady of booting from a DVD. Eventually I'll use them up and then figure out my USB problems.

[rab0171610]

Most commercial DVD-R's used organic dyes that degrade over time. The expected maximum lifespan of a home burned DVD was less than 5 years without bit loss back in those days. I know this because in the year 2001, I "Altavista'd it in Netscape", which translated for the younger generation means "I Googled it in Firefox." Also the laser in the DVD burner may not be in its prime after all these years. Something to consider.

Good Luck!

[oshunluvr]

Great info. Thanks!

[rab0171610]

Just some additional technical info:

[O]rganic dye was used in the construction of the disc ... a recordable compact disc is a piece of polycarbonate plastic with a layer of organic dye into which the data is "burned."

As the drive's recording laser pulses on and off hundreds of times a second, it crystallizes the dye at a known rate to form ones and zeroes. This information is later read back by the drive and is pieced together to form your data.

[GreyGeek]

To add to my previous post in this thread, an observation which I forgot to include in it.
I have never had a DVD/RW platter go bad on me, regardless of age. I made this observation about 3 or 4 years before I switched to USB sticks, and until I switched every thing I burned to a DVD was burned to a Read/Write DVD.
I had about a dozen RW DVDs and cycled through them when making my weekly backups. I still have a plastic canister of about a dozen CDs and one 100 CD canister that I have never opened. They have been setting in my overhead bookcase for over 6 years. I'll never use them.

[oshunluvr]

OK, I finally got back to this. I found some DVD+RW blanks at the bottom of my spindle. The first one I tried worked perfectly. Seems clear the issue was the DVD-R media.I think I'll just chuck the remaining used DVD-Rs as they don;t appear to work at all.

Thanks everyone, for the comments.

[rab0171610]

Like I said, maybe they were just degraded over time. They do have a shelf life.