I'm far from an expert when it comes to CD's but I am an Information Technology Director for a software company and as such have a fair amount of experience with CD's used for both product distribution and for archive purposes. Let me share some observations:
Quality of CD-R's: A few years ago this was a major issue. The lower priced (lower quality) CD's that you could buy in bulk were just plain bad. Today CD quality is much more consistent across the spectrum of CD-R's that are available. IMHO I don't see a need for buying the supposed "high quality" CD-R's. However I still would stay away from the "budget" CD-R's
At work we use Verbatim CD-R's with a whilte printable surface for product distribution. Because of the volume discounts we get on these we also use the "printable" CD-R's for general purposes.
Also let me say that I have never seen a CD-R failure that resulted in lost data (we burn about 20,000 CD-R's per year). Although being the anal information technology guy I am, I always make two copies of anything important (especially my pictures).
CD-RW's: These fall into two categories. The first being CD-RW's used regularly for large system backups and offline or nearline storage. These run several dollars per CD-RW and must be rotated out of service as they do have a limited reliable lifetime (like a tape or any other media). The second category of CD-RW's is those used by consumers. Again, IMHO...I would not rely on these for storage of photos. I have seen way too many of these become unreadable and need to be re-formatted after many writes and re-writes.
Unfortunatley I don't have much to share on DVD's. We are just getting into using them for product distribution and some specific backup applications.
Hope this helps.
Quality of CD-R's: A few years ago this was a major issue. The lower priced (lower quality) CD's that you could buy in bulk were just plain bad. Today CD quality is much more consistent across the spectrum of CD-R's that are available. IMHO I don't see a need for buying the supposed "high quality" CD-R's. However I still would stay away from the "budget" CD-R's
At work we use Verbatim CD-R's with a whilte printable surface for product distribution. Because of the volume discounts we get on these we also use the "printable" CD-R's for general purposes.
Also let me say that I have never seen a CD-R failure that resulted in lost data (we burn about 20,000 CD-R's per year). Although being the anal information technology guy I am, I always make two copies of anything important (especially my pictures).
CD-RW's: These fall into two categories. The first being CD-RW's used regularly for large system backups and offline or nearline storage. These run several dollars per CD-RW and must be rotated out of service as they do have a limited reliable lifetime (like a tape or any other media). The second category of CD-RW's is those used by consumers. Again, IMHO...I would not rely on these for storage of photos. I have seen way too many of these become unreadable and need to be re-formatted after many writes and re-writes.
Unfortunatley I don't have much to share on DVD's. We are just getting into using them for product distribution and some specific backup applications.
Hope this helps.
