CDMediaWorld was basically my guide to which labels and chemistries were the ones to get. It was crazy how much research was there, down to which brands came from the same production lines with a different name on it. Despite the copyright at the bottom, I don't think it's been updated in 20 years.
Most of the discs I burned back in the late 90s and early 2000s are still kicking. I recently transferred my old SD fansubs and stuff to M-Disc BluRay. As an aside, these are expensive, but it's nice to condense my hoard old cakeboxes into a 20 disc case.
That said, maybe 5 years ago I picked up more CD-R when my stash of blanks was used, for use with a PC Engine CD. I recently revisted and, of everything I tried, all the stuff I burned on old stock is still good and the majority of the stuff I burned on new stock had a lot of errors. Same burning hardware, all tested when it was fresh.
The same problem with floppy disks back in the day. At the tail end of production, the media was absolute trash with shit quality control. I would recommend to anyone who needs media for legacy formats today to do a little Retail Archeology and check out the back and bottom shelves of office supply stores to find new old stock instead of whatever they're shipping out of warehouses today.
I have a huge book of old CD-Rs with games on it I've been going through the last year and getting into a more usable format. I don't think any of them have failed except the ones with obviously physical damage. They aren't as bad as they seem given normal inside storage conditions.
This stuff being things that have been totally out of mind for a decade plus. That's one of the reasons I like discs, I put this stuff away to the level of almost discarding it and it's still fine. Many other formats I would have had to actively keep, and I don't think I have anything left that was on my computer in the 90s that wasn't on CD.
Modern BD-R is nice too, they are so niche more effort is put into longevity than when CD-Rs were everywhere.
I considered migrating my old CDs to more modern storage but it's all stuff I haven't touched in a decade and probably never will again. So it doesn't really matter if it still works or not. The CDs can continue to exist in their Schrödinger state .
CDMediaWorld was basically my guide to which labels and chemistries were the ones to get. It was crazy how much research was there, down to which brands came from the same production lines with a different name on it. Despite the copyright at the bottom, I don't think it's been updated in 20 years.
Most of the discs I burned back in the late 90s and early 2000s are still kicking. I recently transferred my old SD fansubs and stuff to M-Disc BluRay. As an aside, these are expensive, but it's nice to condense my hoard old cakeboxes into a 20 disc case.
That said, maybe 5 years ago I picked up more CD-R when my stash of blanks was used, for use with a PC Engine CD. I recently revisted and, of everything I tried, all the stuff I burned on old stock is still good and the majority of the stuff I burned on new stock had a lot of errors. Same burning hardware, all tested when it was fresh.
The same problem with floppy disks back in the day. At the tail end of production, the media was absolute trash with shit quality control. I would recommend to anyone who needs media for legacy formats today to do a little Retail Archeology and check out the back and bottom shelves of office supply stores to find new old stock instead of whatever they're shipping out of warehouses today.
I have a huge book of old CD-Rs with games on it I've been going through the last year and getting into a more usable format. I don't think any of them have failed except the ones with obviously physical damage. They aren't as bad as they seem given normal inside storage conditions.
This stuff being things that have been totally out of mind for a decade plus. That's one of the reasons I like discs, I put this stuff away to the level of almost discarding it and it's still fine. Many other formats I would have had to actively keep, and I don't think I have anything left that was on my computer in the 90s that wasn't on CD.
Modern BD-R is nice too, they are so niche more effort is put into longevity than when CD-Rs were everywhere.
I considered migrating my old CDs to more modern storage but it's all stuff I haven't touched in a decade and probably never will again. So it doesn't really matter if it still works or not. The CDs can continue to exist in their Schrödinger state .