What brand of CDs to buy?

[BobT]

I'm looking for advice on which brrands of CDs to purchase for my photos.

Needs to be economical and especially available from somewhere like Wal-Mart of Office Max(both are close to where I live). I know that you'll want to suggest something more expensive, or via on-line, but please be reasonable.

What packaging info should I look for that might favor CDs for photos vs. those for music. Is there really any difference?
I need discs ASAP(today if possible). So I'll eagerly await your advice.
Thanks

 

[chuxter]

I'm looking for advice on which brrands of CDs to purchase for my
photos.
Needs to be economical and especially available from somewhere like
Wal-Mart of Office Max(both are close to where I live). I know that
you'll want to suggest something more expensive, or via on-line, but
please be reasonable.
What packaging info should I look for that might favor CDs for photos
vs. those for music. Is there really any difference?

No difference.

I need discs ASAP(today if possible). So I'll eagerly await your
advice.

Just get them.

--
Charlie Davis
Nikon 5700, Sony R1, Nikon D300
HomePage: http://www.1derful.info
Bridge Blog: http://www.here-ugo.com/BridgeBlog/
'I'm from Texas. We have meat in our vegetables.' Trenton Doyle Hancock

 

[BobT]

Thanks. Any brands any better than others? What about the "speed" stat?

I thought someone told me that the slower the better for photos. Silver or gold coloring mean anything?

 

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Thanks. Any brands any better than others? What about the "speed"
stat?
I thought someone told me that the slower the better for photos.
Silver or gold coloring mean anything?

--
I use Verbatim and the Kodak Gold ones..no problems at all..

Some of the cheapie makes are not good, avoid Ritek like the plague..hopeless

 

[BobT]

I know that Verbatim brand discs are hit and miss at our local stores. Sometimes they're there ,but often not. What about Maxell or Sony?

 

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I know that Verbatim brand discs are hit and miss at our local
stores. Sometimes they're there ,but often not. What about Maxell
or Sony?

Not sure about Maxell, they seem decent enough from past use. The sony ones are really made by Verbatim anyway..just branded sony..so they should be just fine.

I use Verbatim for general use, for long term archives, the gold ones are worth a look..

 

[Guidenet]

You're talking about digital here. Data is stored as zeros and ones. A good CD or a bad CD will hold the data just the same. You can't get a poorer quality image stored on a lower cost CD because the data is the same.

That said, some cheaper CD brands have a lower success rate in the burning and will cost more because you've thrown away some. But once the images are successfully stored, there's no difference at all. If the data is stored incorrectly or with missing data, it won't cause a poor image. It will be no image at all, regardless of the CD cost. There is only one way to store a zero and one way to store a one.

--
Cheers, Craig

 

[BobT]

I think I have enough info to head off to the store. I do know that many(most) CDs appear either gold or silver, and that the gold ones seem to be advised. Does this mean that the silver ones are, in some way, inferior, then?

Thanks for all your help, folks. Much appreciated.

 

[Barry Fitzgerald]

You're talking about digital here. Data is stored as zeros and ones.
A good CD or a bad CD will hold the data just the same. You can't get
a poorer quality image stored on a lower cost CD because the data is
the same.

That said, some cheaper CD brands have a lower success rate in the
burning and will cost more because you've thrown away some. But once
the images are successfully stored, there's no difference at all. If
the data is stored incorrectly or with missing data, it won't cause a
poor image. It will be no image at all, regardless of the CD cost.
There is only one way to store a zero and one way to store a one.

--

It does matter...I had major failures on Ritek media over the years. Not all media is the same quality, poorer makers are using weaker dyes..and their discs simply won't stand up to the test of time..

And that was only after a couple of years..

There are a number of articles out there with suggestions for storage etc etc.

Your information is deeply misleading...

Some of those no name media discs are pretty poor in quality..

 

[AlphaDSLR]

The only brand I every had a lot of problems with was Memorex. I bought some at buy one get one free and had about a 50% fail rate on the first spindle. I took the others back and never used again. I have never had a Sony or Fuji fail.

If you check the AVS forum, you will see which media have had problems.

What Guidenet said is correct. You either get the data stored or you get an error. My problem was simply defective media that would not store data. Once you have the data stored, protect the disk from heat and light and it should last a long time.

Optical storage is not as permanent as magnetic storage. Your best bet is to backup to a hard drive or a tape drive. If you are using a CD to share, it is a great cheap way.

 

[Guidenet]

Guidenet wrote:

It does matter...I had major failures on Ritek media over the years.
Not all media is the same quality, poorer makers are using weaker
dyes..and their discs simply won't stand up to the test of time..

And that was only after a couple of years..

There are a number of articles out there with suggestions for storage
etc etc.

Your information is deeply misleading...

Some of those no name media discs are pretty poor in quality..

Either you didn't read what I said or you didn't understand it. I'm not sure which.

I said that cheaper media might not hold up and you might end up tossing the bad ones away.

What I said was that cheaper media will not cause the data or images to be of less quality. It's digital. If the stored data is not corrupted, it will not be poorer than that same stored data that is stored on 14k gold plates created by NASA. Digital data is digital data. Moreover, if it's corrupted, the image won't be of poorer quality than a uncorrupted file, it will not exist as an image file. It wouldn't be usable at all.

Digital data is zeros and ones. That's all they are. You can't have bad ones and good ones or bad zeros and good zeros. You can only have mixed up zeros and ones. If you have that, you don't have a usuable file. If a cheap CD fails to record the zeros and ones in the right order, the disk is presumed to be corrupt and you toss it away. The image stored by the mixed up zeros and ones wll not exist. It won't be an image of lower quality than the same image stored properly.

The quality has to do with the life expectancy, not image quality.

My information was not at all misleading, if you read it through. It was quite accurate.

--
Cheers, Craig

 

[sherwoodpete]

Digital data is zeros and ones. That's all they are. You can't have
bad ones and good ones or bad zeros and good zeros.

That's obviously not true. A good zero reflects perfectly, and is of a specified size. A good one does not reflect at all, and is of a specified size.

In practice, the ones and zeros will have soft edges, vary in in size and reflectivity, to the extent that ambiguity occurs. One CD reader may interpret a location as a one. Another reader may interpret the same location as a zero.
Perfect ones and zeros exist only in theoretical textbooks.

Regards,
Peter

 

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Digital data is zeros and ones. That's all they are. You can't have
bad ones and good ones or bad zeros and good zeros.

That's obviously not true. A good zero reflects perfectly, and is of
a specified size. A good one does not reflect at all, and is of a
specified size.
In practice, the ones and zeros will have soft edges, vary in in size
and reflectivity, to the extent that ambiguity occurs. One CD reader
may interpret a location as a one. Another reader may interpret the
same location as a zero.
Perfect ones and zeros exist only in theoretical textbooks.

Regards,
Peter

Exactly...

I would advise people to avoid the cheapest discs or no name jobs, and stick to solid makers...

 

[baloo_buc]

It does matter. A low quality CD will degrade in as few as two weeks while a good one in at least 5 years.

I use TDK and Verbatim with a lot of success (just one CD lost in 10 years). I had quite bad experiences with Creation and Emtec CDs (all lost between 2 months and 2 years after burning).
--
Victor
Bucuresti, Romania
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m268/victor_petcu/
http://picasaweb.google.com/teodor.nitica/
http://picasaweb.google.com/vpreallize/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/v_petcu/

 

[Guidenet]

Geeze! You gotta be kidding. Did you not understand what I'm talking about? That was truly a pedantic response.

Did you not understand that I'm not talking about a corrupt file because of poor reading of the data? Is that so hard to understand?

The poor reading of the data won't show a degraded image. It will just mean a corrupt file. Is that hard to understand? I can't believe you'd take the time to read the entire post and come up with that silly response, or that anyone would read it and be so silly as to agree. I've said it twice in fairly easy to understand English, yet some still insist that I'm talking about the media with regards to the ability to record properly.

I'll try one more time. This is not about the quality of the reader or media with regards to the ability to record the data correctly. The point was that if the data was recorded correctly and read correctly, the quality of the reader or media doesn't affect the quality of the image file. In other words, cheap media or cheap recorders won't cause a degraded image. It will either be a corrupted file or a non-corrupted file. Cheap media and cheap recorders often have a higher rate of corruption. Nobody said anything different than that.

What this means is that if one used cheap crappy media, one would not expect poor quality images. One might expect a high failure rate. You throw those disks away. One also might expect them not to last as long. You might lose images. But the images themselves won't deteriorate. They won't turn yellow or become blurry with age on poor media. That's because it's digitally stored.
--
Cheers, Craig

 

[Guidenet]

Victor, you're smart. Reread my entire post and not just the title.

--
Cheers, Craig

 

[sherwoodpete]

Geeze! You gotta be kidding. Did you not understand what I'm talking
about? That was truly a pedantic response.

I take your point regarding image degradation - a poor cd does not give blurred images and so on.

However, my response was in no way pedantic. It is practical and real-world advice to recognise that the quality of a disc does matter.

Even if a disc is made and it is possible to read back the data correctly, it may still be poor disc. That's because optical recording uses a lot of data redundancy and error correction. A disc that appears to work correctly may be doing so only by invoking all of the error correction in order to do so. If that is the case, the slightest degradation in the future, from any cause whatsoever, could render the disc useless. A better disc could survive some degradation but still be readable.
The real-world, practical conclusion is that disc quality matters.

Regards,
Peter

 

[chuxter]

Even if a disc is made and it is possible to read back the data
correctly, it may still be poor disc. That's because optical
recording uses a lot of data redundancy and error correction. A disc
that appears to work correctly may be doing so only by invoking all
of the error correction in order to do so. If that is the case, the
slightest degradation in the future, from any cause whatsoever, could
render the disc useless. A better disc could survive some degradation
but still be readable.

Thanks, Pete...

I read all the way down here, expecting someone to mention that a CD (and DVD too) DON'T record just zeros and ones like most magnetic media did. There is a significant overhead of data redundancy because NO optical media is perfect. The system is designed to do error correction most of the time.

What we need (and I wish I had) is a way to quantify the level of error correction that a CD/DVD reader is using to read media. That would allow us to:

1) Tell immediately if a new batch of optical media is marginal.

2) Monitor the degradation of a disk collection and replace media before it fails completely.
3) Discriminate between different brands of disk readers.

The real-world, practical conclusion is that disc quality matters.

Yes, but it's impossible to discriminate between good and bad media by looking at the outside of the packaging. There are only a few manufacturers! These guys make it for everybody...

When a manufacturing fault happens, there is no way to predict which brand label will go on the product. Thankfully, major faults don't happen often. When they do, the brand is labeled "bad" by the few people who were unlucky to get the bad batch of product. But this anecdotal lesson that "Brand A" is "bad" is not valuable for others.

[aside] I once bought a Ford product. It was the worst car I ever had. I refuse to buy another Ford product. But I don't tell strangers not to buy a Ford. I tell them that a Ford is as good as a Chevy. What I hope that the smart ones will take away is "don't buy an American car".

BTW, I really wish this wasn't true. [end aside]

Bottom Line: All the major brands of optical media are OK. Personally, I'd avoid brands that I have not heard of. Optical media is a poor way to archive data.

--
Charlie Davis
Nikon 5700, Sony R1, Nikon D300
HomePage: http://www.1derful.info
Bridge Blog: http://www.here-ugo.com/BridgeBlog/
'I'm from Texas. We have meat in our vegetables.' Trenton Doyle Hancock

 

[Guidenet]

I take your point regarding image degradation - a poor cd does not
give blurred images and so on.

.

Regards,
Peter

No problem. I shouldn't have flown off the handle. People were responding to my title rather than the subject matter of my post, and I was a bit frustrated.

Your above remark was all I was saying. Nothing more.

--
Cheers, Craig

 

[Adrian Veidt]

CDs are known to degrade over time. Additionally, it's an enormous waste of your time, closet space, and money.

I saved pictures to CD once, realized what a big pain in the neck it was going to be and ceased that practice immediately. Now I have a redundant harddrive in a fire-proof safe.

I realize that you're looking for the cheapest way to save your files, so I'll explain this to you so you too can enjoy a much easier time and reliable manner in which to save your data.

Ebay. That's right. Ebay. You can buy a 500 Gigabyte Harddrive right now for $50. Or if that's a bit heavy for the wallet right now, get a 100 Gig Drive for $10. That's the rate right now, $1 per 10 Gigs. There's nothing cheaper, more reliable, or easier to use than harddrive space.

I can't imagine the nightmare I would be in right now if I did the CD thing. I'd have around 1,000 CDs and 1,000 more if I wanted backups. I'd have to wait for slow load times to read the CDs if I wanted to check the pictures out. I'd have to wait for slow write times to burn the CDs for storage. I'd have to deal with some kind of labeling system that a simple harddrive folder can do far better. I'd probably give up photography if I had to mess with all that stuff.

Just buy more harddrive space. It's the cheapest way to go by far and in the future you can add that fireproof safe and extra hardrives to protect from harddrive failure because it does happen and it happened to me. Good thing I had a backup drive or I would have lost years of work. But I do have a backup drive, and all I had to do was buy a new drive and copy the data to the new drive. EASY!!!!!

Now when I want to find a picture, I can locate it in about 1 single minute, no matter what the picture is or where it's located. I use the Europeon dating method which is chronologically alphanumeric as far as computer nomenclature. 2008-01-06. Then I add a name to the folder's date, so a folder name might look like this: 2008-01-06 - Snowstorm, Pets, Tests. I can preview those folders, and with software like ACD or Bridge, I can give pictures individual ratings.

I can't imagine the difficulty of struggling with CDs. That would just drive me nuts.