AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - CD-R Life Expectancy?

"Rusty Boudreaux" wrote:

Do a search on long strategy dyes (long lifetime) vs short
strategy dyes (3-5 yr life).

A general rule: Phthalocyanine(gold, light green bottom) discs
will last longer than cyanine/metal azo(green, blue, dark blue
bottom) discs. Cyanine tends to degrade faster with UV and heat.

Not too long ago most manufacturers used long strategy dyes.
Most are switching or have switched to short strategy due to
economics (those cheap 100 disk spindles at best buy). Most
won't tell you what dyes they use. However, there is a program
floating around that will read the strategy off the media (I
can't remember the name).

Unless you use a program to check each CDR batch for long
strategy dye or buy long life discs (like Verbatim's
DataLifePlus) then I wouldn't assume more than a few years of
normal life before data errors.

This is interesting and also may have storage strategy implications for
archival.