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CD-R media prices, unknown CD-R vendors, conflicting
claims by these vendors, then there are the green /
gold / blue dye's and gold / silver metallizations.
All this information is very confusing to the CD-R buyer.
Users just want quality CD-R's for a low price but usually
this doesn't mix.
There are a lot of these low budget CD-R's on sale
everywhere but no-one can really tell what the quality
of these CD-R's is and will be the impact of ageing
is on the CD-R's.
In late 1998/early 1999 a few computer magazines
in Europe featured a very interesting article on the
quality of CD-R's. In
this article a total of 170 CD-R's (17 brands, 10
per brand) were subjected to a test and the results
varied a lot.
This article will give you some insight on the real
quality for those low budget CD-R's which
are sold everywhere now.
The article was also featured in the Belgium Computer
Magazine Issue 89 - February 1999 (Word 6.0
document / French language).
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quality of CD-R's is directly related with the time
the CD-R's will last without losing the information
on them. The second important issue is that the CD-R
can be used on any kind of CD-Reader without any problems.
One of the solutions to test the quality is to write
a few CD-Rs, then wait about 25-50 years and check
if the CD-R's still hold the correct data. This is
ofcouse a bit extreme.
A better solution is to use the CATS CD-R/CD-RW
Analyzer which is made by Audio
Development. This company is market-leader
in supplying reliable automated test systems for all
CD & DVD media. The CATS Analyzer is a
complete hardware & software test solution which
is build around the Philips CDM4 Optical Drive.
This drive is specially designed to retrieve very
accurate information from a CD.
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idea is to speed-up the ageing process of a CD-R from
about 25-50 years to only a few days. The answer for
this is to use a Climate-Chamber, which artificially
ages CD-R's by exposing them to extreme temperatures
and humidity.
Before the CD-R's go into the Climate-Chamber a number
of them are written to, then they are subjected to
the CATS CD-R Analyzer to measure the
current quality. After they are "aged" for
a number of days the same measurements are conducted
again to check for differences.
When the differences are minor then the quality of
the CD-R is good, when there are big differences then
this means the Data on the written CD-R's is not useable
anymore which results in a low quality CD-R.
During the actual test a total of 136 CD-R's (8 per
brand) were burned and then the CATS CD-R Analyzer was
used to measure the Before results.
Then all 170 CD-R's were put in a Climate-Chamber
which artificially "aged" the CD-R's (this
test method is called the Cyclic Damp Heat Test).
The CD-R's where left in this Climate-Chamber for
1 week, where they were exposed to extreme temperatures
and humidity.
After this week the 34 CD-R's (2 per brand), which
where not burned yet, were burned on a Plextor CD-Writer
at single speed & quad speed.
After this all 170 CD-R's were subjected again to
the CATS CD-R Analyzer to get the After results.
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Before and After tests were compared and
here are the results of the test:
Good
Quality Results:
- Do not have any problems
with the aging process.
- Don't have errors.
- Can write at all
speeds it is supposed to be able to handle.
Medium Quality Results:
- Don't have major problems with the aging
process.
- Still have errors which can't be corrected.
Bad
Quality Results:
- Totally can't handle
the aging process.
- Too many errors which
can't be corrected.
- Are not suited to
record AUDIO data.
- Have problems writing
at speeds higher than 1x.
The article also encountered a very bad TraxData
Silver batch (which came in softcase), which
was very sensitive to UV light. While testing the
CD-R's a lot of errors were encountered exactly where
there was no print on the label (so you could "read"
the Traxdata logo in the errors!) It seemed that the
ink was hardened with UV light thus causing the errors.
This faulty batch was replaced by TraxData for a "better"
one before the above results.
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most common factories of quality CD-R's are: |
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Factories of medium
quality CD-R's are:
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| Factories
of low quality (=cheaper) CD-R's: |
| CD
Manufacturer |
CD
Brand |
| Princo Corporation |
BTC,
Princo
& KingTech |
| Gigastorage
Corporation |
Gigastorage |
| Lead Data Inc. |
Lead
Data, Lenco
& Targa |
| Fornet International
Pte Ltd. |
Fornet
& Magnex |
| Ritek Co. |
Arita,
BASF,
Dysan,
FujiFilm,
Hi-Space,
Intenso,
JTEC,
Memorex,
MegaData,
, MMore,
Onkyo,
Philips,
Pony,
Ricoh,
Rimax,
Samsung,
Targa,
TDK,
Traxdata,
Waitec
& War |
| CMC Magnetics
Corporation |
BASF,
CMC
& Imation |
| About 95% of
the current blank NoName
CD-R's are made in these low quality CD factories. |
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Factories for which
not enough info is available to come to a conclusion:
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| CD
Manufacturer |
CD
Brand |
| CDA Dateträger
Albrechts GmbH |
CDA
& FNAC |
| Postech Corp. |
Laser |
| Xcitek Inc. |
BestMedia |
| Multi Media
Masters & Machinary |
Polaroid |
| Prodisc Technology
Inc. |
ProDisc |
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conclusion is very simple: Quality & Low Prices
just don't mix!
There are a lot of low-budget CD-R's of which the
quality is very bad. For some applications, like games,
the quality doesn't matter much as this is not critical
data. For vital data, like backups, it is very important
to choose a CD brand which will keep your data intact
for a long time.
The biggest low-budget CD-R vendor in Europe CD-R's
is Ritek.
Especially the ones made for Arita
are well known everywhere.
Ritek
prides itself on the quality of their CD-R's but it
seems that the CD-R's made in the their factories
are not as good as they say!
Keep in mind that CD-R vendors sometimes change from
one CD factory to another and then sometimes keep
the same CD layout and type. This can be very confusing.
More on this issue can be read in the CD
Factories article.
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