Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 37014
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2025/04/03 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
4/3     

2005/4/1-2 [Computer/HW/Drives] UID:37014 Activity:nil
3/31    Oh great all knowing motd,  what's the deal with CD-R/RW quality and
        possible degradation?  Does it matter? What's the best value for
        bulk purchasing of CD's that won't degrade? Costco? Fry's?  Oh,
        and ditto for DVD+R's.
        \_ Conventional wisdom says to avoid the cheapo bulk ones.  Spend a
           little more and get Taiyo Yuden manufactured media (basically
           look for a Made in Japan label).  Brand names don't matter;
           the actual media supplier is what matters, and brands often
           changes suppliers.
        \_ The chemical layer is very important.  Better manufacturers will use
           a gold dye (best) or a silver dye (good).  Less stable are the
           blue-green dyes which I believe are cyano-acrylics.
           For DVDs there are also good and bad dyes, but I don't remember
           which is which.
        \_ The TDK cheapos at CostCo have served me well.  I put them and a
           bunch of Imation disks in a container that held 80 CDs and the
           plastic of the container appears to have damaged the CDs.  The
           Imations were nearly unreadable (some were unreadable).  The TDKs
           were just fine.
2025/04/03 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
4/3     

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