I have just had a second CD-RW (Verbatim) go bad on me. This one had a lot of family pictures from past years. Fortunately I kept most of them backed up on another hard drive but still am trying to receive some pics from 2005 from this CD. I can see the image files but can't click on some of them. Some copy and some dont. I get the error message below freqently when trying to access them. It was a drag-n-drop created with Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5 with a HP burner. These CDs are less than 3 years old. I never had this kind of problem with 3.5 floppies. They were certainly more reliable than this new high volume format. Is anyone familiar with this error from Roxio?? Its a red x error message: drag-to-disc Media status notification for drive D:\: Read failure while accessing the media I did a search but just found a few roxio messages about telling people to upgrader their burner firmware. I am thinking of abandoning all CD media and back up tools and just getting separate Hard drives to back things up on.
Hi Alan . Never use CD-RWs for long term storage. The rewritable dye on the disc fails over time. I have been using normal CD-Rs for my photos and data and have no problems. Make sure you Finalize each disc, even if you dont fill the CD-R up they are cheap enough nowadays , 10 to 15 cents each, to burn a bunch. If you download Nero CD Speed you can check the discs for problems and scan them to see if the data is ok.
Hi, thanks, that's helpful info, though, why didn't anyone ever tell me that?!?! Maybe they said it on an old, archived show of tech tv but who knows? Now that i realize that, it almost makes me wonder,,,,shouldn't CD-RW manufacturers put a warning label on their disks saying something like "CD-RW is NOT a reliable back up media for long term" ?? I kind of feel like the private in "A Few Good Men" - "I did nothing wrong sir!, I followed the orders to back up my data!" O well I didn't lose much, and of what I did, I had videos of the events the pictures were of.
CD-RW's are crap. I'd recommend getting an Iomega ZIP 750 drive. Same capacity as a CD-RW but without the dye problems.
Yes I now realize CD-RW is crap , I just wish that had been explained to me a long time ago or widely reported by responsible people in the industry before I bought some. I have decided to quit using them except for VERY short term needs and I now use a USB External HD.
CD-RWs use five layers of phase change material, not dye. Because the material is not affected by UV light, only heat, it may be longer lasting than many dyes used in CD-Rs. The problem with CD-RW discs is incompatible formatting. Drag and drop requires that the disc be formatted first with Roxio's packet-writing software. That means that if the disc is inserted into a drive with different packet-writing software and an auto-run feature on, the different software may end up corrupting the address structure on the Roxio-written disc. CD-RWs were meant to be completely erased after use, but people wanted them to work like floppies; and that required packet-writing software. Unfortunately, there are dozens of incompatible formatting methods used (Floppies had only two: IBM and Apple.) The best way to use CD-RWs is to treat them just like CD-Rs but keep them on the same drive (different laser beam shapes from different manufacturers' diodes is another, lesser problem.)
