Mini-Me
06-12-2010, 04:46 AM
Tonight, I am trying to archive some old CD-R's written back in 2000 or earlier.
Every single modern drive I try to read them on, has been something of a hit-and-miss affair - sometimes a disc will read, others won't.
I tried external USB DVD drives, internal IDE and SATA DVD drives, and even laptop DVD drives, most of them could not read about 50% of the discs.
As an experiment, I put an ancient old Mitsumi 4804 CD-RW drive on a IDE-USB cable, and it could read every single one of the problem discs. The old 4804 is a 4x CD-burner - 4x was it's fastest burn speed.
So the lesson here, is don't throw out your old CD-RW drive, as it would seem that modern DVD drives, for whatever reason, cannot read CD-R's that are getting a bit old. This 4804 even reads the old blue-die CD-R's that were among the first on the scene when CD-R arrived, but the modern DVD drives refuse to see the blue-die discs at all.
Every single modern drive I try to read them on, has been something of a hit-and-miss affair - sometimes a disc will read, others won't.
I tried external USB DVD drives, internal IDE and SATA DVD drives, and even laptop DVD drives, most of them could not read about 50% of the discs.
As an experiment, I put an ancient old Mitsumi 4804 CD-RW drive on a IDE-USB cable, and it could read every single one of the problem discs. The old 4804 is a 4x CD-burner - 4x was it's fastest burn speed.
So the lesson here, is don't throw out your old CD-RW drive, as it would seem that modern DVD drives, for whatever reason, cannot read CD-R's that are getting a bit old. This 4804 even reads the old blue-die CD-R's that were among the first on the scene when CD-R arrived, but the modern DVD drives refuse to see the blue-die discs at all.