Results of CD-R media study
Michael D. Martin, Jason J. Hyon · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1995
CD-R media is increasingly being looked upon as an excellent archival media with an estimated storage life on the order of 100 years. Since the government will be making large investments in CD-R media, it is imperative that the characteristics of media, recorders, test devices, and compatibility with CD-ROM readers be understood. This article summarizes the results of a CD-R media evaluation conducted by SIGCAT (the Federal Special Interest Group for CD-ROM Applications and Technology) and follow-on evaluations performed by the Data Distribution Laboratory at JPL. For this evaluation, 250 media samples from various manufacturers were recorded on several recorders at different record rates. Every byte of every disc recorded in the study was retievable on some, but not all, CD-ROM readers. We are confident that any commercially available media recorded on 2X recorders will provide a reliable archival media. We have, however, identified incompatibilities between single-speed (1X) recorders and phthalocyanine-based media and between high speed recorders (i.e. 4X and 6X recorders) and cyanine-based media. We recommend that the industry address the recorder and media incompatibilities and that a specification be developed for robust CD-R reader for use in archival applications.