cdfreaks.com has an interesting article (original from a Dutch magazine, translated from Dutch to English) that made me think about how save my data on CD-R was:
"The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was
recorded 20 months ago had become
unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers.
It is presumed that CD-Rs are good for at least 10 years. Some manufacturers even claim that their CD-Rs will last up to a century. From our tests it's concluded however that
there is a lot of junk on the market. We came across CD-Rs that should never have been released to the market. It's completely unacceptable that CD-Rs become unusable in less than two years."
"On the image below you can see the exact same CD-R. On the left you see the outcome of our tests done in 2001. On the right you see the same CD-R in 2003. The colours indicate the severeness of the errors in the following order; white, green, yellow and red whereas white indicates that the disc can be read well and red indicates that it cannot be read."
This is
shocking, and makes me wonder how should I backup my data, ebooks and music collections.