Top 40 Music on Compact Disc: Back up your valuable CDs!

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Brian W.
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Posted: 04 January 2010 at 10:43pm \| IP Logged

I just want to encourage everyone to make CD-R backups of your out-of-print, valuable CDs. I've been going through my old CD singles and putting them on my iPod as Apple Lossless files, and so far I've run across THREE that have disc rot... will no longer play properly. All are CDs I've owned since the late '80s and early '90s.

Two were imports manufactured by PDO (legendary for their failed discs), but today I was surprised to find that my Whitney Houston "Love Will Save the Day" promo CD single will not play properly either. I THINK I have a second copy of it somewhere (though I can't find it at the moment... maybe I sold it), but just be aware... your CDs could go bad at any time. Consider backing up your most valuable ones.

aaronk
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Posted: 04 January 2010 at 11:11pm \| IP Logged

That's really great advice, Brian. I'm in the process of digitizing my entire collection as wav files. It's also important to make backups of your backups (store your files on two different drives).

eric_a
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 12:47am \| IP Logged

aaronk wrote:

That's really great advice, Brian. I'm in the process of digitizing my entire collection as wav files. It's also important to make backups of your backups (store your files on two different drives).

I have to second Aaron's advice. I lost a 500 GB hard drive about a year ago - comprising about 30% of the music I had digitized, all as wav files. Fortunately, most of it came from CD, which was painful but possible to rerip. However, I lost 500-1000 tracks I had dubbed from vinyl. Not sure when or if I'll get around to rerecording those.

The sad irony is that the hard drive crashed just as I finally got around to backing it up for the first time! I won't wait that long again!

crapfromthepast
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 8:20am \| IP Logged

Agreed all the way around.

I currently have 3 external USB drives plugged into my home machine at all times, and each time I rip a CD, I copy it over to one of the other drives. It's good to be a little paranoid - hard drives are cheap, and this is really time-consuming. (I've ripped about 1500 CDs and it feels like I haven't made a dent in the basement...)

I'd also recommend ripping with Exact Audio Copy (EAC) - a free program that works with Windows machines. It ensures that you get an accurate rip, and if there are problems, it lets you know exactly where in your files there may be ripping issues.

Also, for problem discs, I'd try ripping on different machines. Some discs put up a fight on one CD drive but rip flawlessly on another.

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EdisonLite
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 10:53am \| IP Logged

eric_a wrote:

I lost a 500 GB hard drive about a year ago

Eric, what brand of external hard drive do you have? I have a 500 GB hard drive, too. I keep WAV files of every song I like on it (basically, folders of WAV files for every CDR I've ever put together - but in totality, they add up to every song I ever want to hear.) Basically, I have all this music stored in 3 places -- on my CDRs, on my external hard drive, and on CDRs stored in another state!

I have my mp3s stored in 4 places: 2 mp3 players, my main drive and my external hard drive.

995wlol
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 11:09am \| IP Logged

Brian, if you look at the inner ring the Whitney Houston CD, does it say it was made by Discovery Systems? By coincidence, just last night I was backing up CDs and had issues with a 1988 Arista promo CD single for Jermaine Stewart / Kashif from the same time period as your CD. It was made by Discovery Systems and could not be ripped securely in EAC. I was able to rip using a different program, but there are audible digital "crackles" throughout. If you look at the label, there are what appear to be tiny bubbles between the label side and the playing surface. It creates almost a "textured" look and can be seen from both sides of the disc. I think all of the Stewart / Kashif promo CDs may be flawed because I had previously purchased a copy that was completely unplayable on all 5 or 6 drives I tried it on.

I worry about the Discovery Systems CDs because two of my other prized promo CD singles from the same time period were manufactured by them--Hall & Oates "Everything Your Heart Desires" and New Order "True Faith". Fortunately, those two CDs do not appear to have the "bubble" issue. I also believe the rare Madonna "You Can Dance - Single Edits" CD was manufactured by Discovery, so make backups if anybody has that one!!

Edited by 995wlol on 05 January 2010 at 11:29am

Brian W.
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 12:58pm \| IP Logged

995wlol wrote:

Brian, if you look at the inner ring the Whitney Houston CD, does it say it was made by Discovery Systems?

YES!!! Holy crap. And I do see a couple teeny bubbles on the top towards the outer edge. Maybe I've never tried to rip it before?

Regarding the Madonna "You Can Dance Edits": I've NEVER been able to rip that with a computer or on my old Philips audio CD recorder. Even at the time I bought it, around 1992, it wouldn't play properly on my little portable CD player... I had to use my laserdisc player. And it has always played fine on my DVD player. A few months ago, I made a successful copy using the digital line out from the DVD player, so it's safe, thankfully. (I did try ripping it with the DVD drive on my computer... no dice.)

Maybe I'll try that with the Whitney CD, since I haven't been able to find my other copy. (It's probably in the same place as my nine-track "Nothing Really Matters" promo, which I can't find either.)

Edited by Brian W. on 05 January 2010 at 1:00pm

aaronk
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 1:17pm \| IP Logged

I have a copy of the Hall & Oates promo for "Everything..." and it has laser rot. I do have it backed up from a good source on CDR, though.

Regarding the hard drives, I'm using Western Digital, and they've always been very reliable for me (knock on wood). Geez, we should've all "tag-teamed" our ripping efforts. It would've saved boatloads of time!

995wlol
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 1:46pm \| IP Logged

Now I'm nervous--right now my only "back ups" are low-quality mp3s that were made close to 10 years ago. I'll be looking for all of my Discovery Systems promos and and ripping them to FLAC as soon as I get home from work!!!

aaronk
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 3:16pm \| IP Logged

995wlol wrote:

Good idea!

eric_a
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Posted: 05 January 2010 at 7:15pm \| IP Logged

EdisonLite wrote:

eric_a wrote:

I lost a 500 GB hard drive about a year
ago

Eric, what brand of external hard drive
do you have?.

I've mainly used the Western Digital "my
book" drives - I have had several with no
problem, and in fairness to wd, my drive
failure came after my cat managed to
knock it off a high shelf. (It continued to
work for some time but the heat from
the full backup may have caused the
failure.)

To hedge my bets, I just bought a 2 TB
Seagate to mirror the 2 TB mybook.
Hopefully any freak issues wont show up
with both mfrs.

Hykker
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Posted: 06 January 2010 at 6:37am \| IP Logged

eric_a wrote:

I've mainly used the Western Digital "my
book" drives - I have had several with no
problem, and in fairness to wd, my drive
failure came after my cat managed to
knock it off a high shelf.

I've also had good luck with these drives. I've used them at work to store the station's production library so it can be easily accessed from any studio.
I've got one at home that I use not only for backups, but it also comes in handy for transferring files between computers on my home network. For example, the only scanner we have is on my wife's computer. If I want to scan something for myself, I don't need to have both computers running in order to get the file, I just save it to the NAS drive.
I did need to upgrade the firmware...a couple features didn't work until I did so.

Getting back to the original topic. I've never really trusted CD-Rs myself. Not that I've had that many problems with them (and most were discs that were made in the 90s), or on a component stereo CD recorder but I'm still leery. Thanks for the heads up on promo CD singles...haven't run across a problem with any yet, but better safe than sorry!

budaniel
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Posted: 06 January 2010 at 8:07am \| IP Logged

it's really a no-win situation. If you convert them to MP3s to save storage space with your backups, you lose sound quality, or you need tons of space to save them as WAV files. If you burn them to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs as backup, whether in WAV or MP3 format, those discs run the risk of rotting, too. If you back them up to a harddrive--well, I personally trust harddrives' longevity even less than CDs.

Ah--remember when CDs were first introduced in the 80s and we were pretty much told they were indestructible and would last forever? I always wondered how they could promise us that a newly created format would last forever...

Meanwhile, should we also be saying a prayer for our DVDs, Blu-Rays, video games, etc? EVERYTHING is on disc these days...

bwolfe
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Posted: 06 January 2010 at 8:11am \| IP Logged

I have some old Discovery discs too.
I think their Hard Report or Album Network discs.
There's a JCI disc "Groovin' Sixties" that won't track at all.
I'll check and see if its a Discovery disc too.
Can the rot be prevented or is just a fact of disc life?
If I don't use the discs and keep them away from heat and cold does it prevent this rot issue?

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aaronk
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Posted: 06 January 2010 at 12:08pm \| IP Logged

From what I've read about "laser rot," it's either a manufacturing issue or a breakdown of the lacquer layer that covers the reflective metal. The metal can oxidize and corrode, making it unreadable.

What I was not aware of until just now is that the metal layer on top of the disc does not contain any information at all. (This, of course, is not the case with CDRs.) The pits are part of the plastic, and the metal layer is only so that the laser can reflect off of it. From Wikipedia:

Quote:

The metal coats the data side of the disc (upper surface), covering the pit and lands. This metal layer is the reflective surface which can be seen on the reverse (non label side) of a CD. This thin layer of metal is subject to corrosion from various contaminants and so is protected by a thin layer of lacquer.

Yah Shure
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Posted: 07 January 2010 at 3:43pm \| IP Logged

I second the motion for backing up hard drive collections. I keep the variable bitrate mp3 versions of my archived vinyl .wav rips on two HDs: an older Maxtor external and a portable mini drive that I can keep off-premises. The older drive is connected to the desktop from which I feed my micro-FM transmitter. This is my default mp3 setup for everyday listening via the radio.

Over the years, that Maxtor drive had become functionally full and highly fragmented, so I did a partial defrag some months back; partial in that some large files couldn't be moved. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that the cross-fading winamp player was skipping over a number of the vinyl mp3s, so I checked the vinyl folder, and found that - with one lone exception - all mp3s by every artist beyond the letter "F" had vanished. I considered the idea that maybe I'd moved them to another drive in order to free up enough space to execute a full defrag, but I hadn't made any written notes to indicate that I'd actually moved those mp3s anywhere. I was hoping this was a hardware issue and not a brainware failure.

So I attempted another Maxtor defrag, but instead got an error message that there were disk errors, and to run chkdisk. I hadn't had any disk errors or run chkdisk in years, but did so, then ran a full defrag on the Maxtor. A quick check of the vinyl folder showed all titles from A to Z present and accounted for. Brain 1, hardware 0.

Fortunately, I'd had a redundant backup vinyl mp3 folder on the mini drive all along, but that incident served as yet another mental reminder of the importance of making regular backups.

anthology123
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Posted: 13 January 2010 at 2:12pm \| IP Logged

With all the anecdotes, and as another IT person here, I would also
recommend redundant hard drives to backup your music. I have 4 myself to
backup my 11,000 song library 4 times.
Also make sure you run disk utilities to check your hard drives before you
defrag them, and don't defrag unless you have another copy on another
hard drive, just good practice.
It might also be good practice to format a hard drive every once in a while
and then restore your backups back (from another hard drive) it would serve
to clean up bad spots on your drive or to see if the drive is failing.

aaronk
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Posted: 13 January 2010 at 7:26pm \| IP Logged

^ All great points! ^

AdvprosD
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Posted: 21 March 2022 at 10:27am \| IP Logged

This topic took a bit of searching to find. I was about to open a new thread, but found this 12 year old one.

So, things have changed a bit in the area of external storage and especially, cloud storage.

I'm interested to hear what members are doing with their collections these days. I was reading another thread and noted someone mentioned losing a hard drive in a computer crash.
I'm not sure what the storage volume was for their drive, but the question came to my mind as, "Was this person saving music on an internal PC drive?"

As in previous posts here, I see that even as far back as 2010, many here had the idea to divorce the storage area from the main computer. whether it be a USB connected drive,
or some other form of RAID configuration. These days, it would seem that there are a lot of companies competing to have you store multiple terabytes of data in their cloud service.
Is anyone using this? And, is it now cost effective to do storage this way? I'm interested to know if folks are annually plunking down $$ for cloud storage as opposed to the
ever increasing storage capacity of an external drive tethered to the computer.

It's kind of weird to see these 16+ tb drives on the market these days. Though it sure is a lot of room to store stuff on, it also seems like a fast way to lose an entire
collection, if you were to use just one drive for the job. I think I know at least one person here using a RAID storage unit in conjunction with NAS technology. Since drives
actually don't last forever, I am probably going to gather all the stuff I have and put a multi-drive storage solution together using RAID. I've noted that a lot of the drives
themselves are equipped with a technology that continuously monitors the drive "health." That way, you can sometimes save data before the drive goes kaput!

I also have an account with Dropbox which offers a plan for "X" amount of storage for a monthly or annual fee. Dropbox has been around quite a while so, I don't think I'd
be concerned with the business going toes-up, without some kind of advance notice. I'm not sure I can store everything there. It might get costly.

As mentioned before, I think it's a better idea to store the music away from the main PC. It makes it a lot easier to save a collection after an OS crash.

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eric_a
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Posted: 22 March 2022 at 12:47am \| IP Logged

AdvprosD wrote:

These days, it would seem that there are
a lot of companies competing to have you store multiple
terabytes of data in their cloud service.
Is anyone using this? And, is it now cost effective to do
storage this way?

I took the plunge last year with iDrive, paying $80/year
for 5 TB, and the first year had a promo for only about
$10. They also have a 10 TB tier for $100. Carbonite
offers unlimited storage for about the same price.

For me, it's a small price to pay for the peace of mind of
having data stored offsite in case of mishap or disaster
at home (e.g., earthquake, fire, burglary).

To your point, there's always a chance a service like this
could disappear, but that hasn't kept me up at night.

Has anyone tried a DIY cloud service, i.e., you connect an
NAS drive at your friend's home for live syncs. Sounds
like minimal costs for upkeep except for maintaining the
hardware.

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