CDRs Not Recognized as Burned

[Dan Gould]

Well here's something I've never had happen before. A clearly burned CDR is only recognized as a blank CDR by my PC.  Goldwave editing software has an extract function, also doesn't "see" the disc.  Put it in the boombox, it plays fine.

 

Anyone had this problem before? Before my PC issues in November I had an Audio ripper software install haven't replaced it but that's my only other thought on how to try to rescue this disc, other than pulling out the boombox to listen.

Edit to add: And now it just happened again!

Edited January 4, 2018 by Dan Gould

[Dan Gould]

Now every CDR is registering as blank including several I played yesterday. Unfuckingbelievable.

Gets better and better (and more and more confusing): Just burned a new CDR to see if it would be recognized.

And it was.

How the hell can it recognize a newly burned CD but not recognize older ones, including ones the system played just yesterday?

[mjzee]

The disc drive in your computer may be going.  Try an external CD drive for comparison.  Amazon has some for around $25.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I seem to remember that if you burn a music CD-R with the option to write more data later, known as "leaving it open", you could get errors like this.

When you burn music CD-Rs, do you select the option to close the disc?

[Dan Gould]

 

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I seem to remember that if you burn a music CD-R with the option to write more data later, known as "leaving it open", you could get errors like this.

When you burn music CD-Rs, do you select the option to close the disc?

I've never left a CDR "unclosed".

[Dan Gould]

Weirder and weirder, tried a second restart of the day, and the first CDR that wasn't recognized is now playing. 

 

[mjzee]

3 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Weirder and weirder, tried a second restart of the day, and the first CDR that wasn't recognized is now playing. 

 

It sounds like the drive is going, but not yet completely gone.  I wouldn't burn any new discs on it, as the faulty drive might encode errors on them.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

14 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

This is one of the reasons I stopped burning discs a decade ago. DAC is the only way to go.

DAC as in Digital-to-Analog Converter? CDs play back through a DAC, so I don't understand the inference here...

[mjzee]

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

DAC as in Digital-to-Analog Converter? CDs play back through a DAC, so I don't understand the inference here...

DAT, perhaps?  Digital Audio Tape, which had a moment a couple of decades ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape

[sonnymax]

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

DAC as in Digital-to-Analog Converter? CDs play back through a DAC, so I don't understand the inference here...

Welcome to the often confusing world of the Cap'n.

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 hours ago, mjzee said:

DAT, perhaps?  Digital Audio Tape, which had a moment a couple of decades ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Tape

I doubt it. From the stories I've been reading, DAT tapes have not held up well at all. I've only had 2 CD-Rs fail so I've been happy with them at this point.

[mjzee]

4 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I doubt it. From the stories I've been reading, DAT tapes have not held up well at all. I've only had 2 CD-Rs fail so I've been happy with them at this point.

Same here.  I've found drives fail far more often than discs.  These days, a perfect failsafe would be a solid state drive.  Then you could burn new discs if any fail.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 hours ago, mjzee said:

Same here.  I've found drives fail far more often than discs.  These days, a perfect failsafe would be a solid state drive.  Then you could burn new discs if any fail.

Unfortunately, solid state hard drives as well as thumb drives, are not necessarily permanent digital storage solutions. The data is "written" electronically and there's no guarantee that the 1 written into a memory location will still be a 1 in a decade. Yes, the memory circuit latches into a fixed state but if aging results in an electronic change that allows that state to flip back, you can lose data. I've read a couple of papers that recommend that you should power up solid state memory every now & then if you want to make sure that your data stays put.

[Daniel A]

Or why not press LP:s of everything? They have a documented lifetime of at least 70 years... 

[T.D.]

6 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Unfortunately, solid state hard drives as well as thumb drives, are not necessarily permanent digital storage solutions. The data is "written" electronically and there's no guarantee that the 1 written into a memory location will still be a 1 in a decade. Yes, the memory circuit latches into a fixed state but if aging results in an electronic change that allows that state to flip back, you can lose data. I've read a couple of papers that recommend that you should power up solid state memory every now & then if you want to make sure that your data stays put.

Hard drives can fail. My work computer's hard drive developed some bad spots a while back, and I had to replace it b/c it was causing the computer to crash. I went to the local Best Buy and the rep was touting expensive solid state hard drives. My tech guy advised me not to spend the extra money because solid state drives fail hard and there is no possible data recovery whatsoever. Dunno whether he was correct, but I followed his advice.

Edited January 5, 2018 by T.D.

[Dave Garrett]

On 1/5/2018 at 4:04 PM, T.D. said:

Hard drives can fail. My work computer's hard drive developed some bad spots a while back, and I had to replace it b/c it was causing the computer to crash. I went to the local Best Buy and the rep was touting expensive solid state hard drives. My tech guy advised me not to spend the extra money because solid state drives fail hard and there is no possible data recovery whatsoever. Dunno whether he was correct, but I followed his advice.

Solid state drives (SSDs) do have a limited number of write cycles before they fail, but that number is high enough to where it's usually not something to worry about in normal use. To optimize the lifespan of an SSD, though, there are some settings that should be changed as they are really only needed on a regular hard drive:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2043634/how-to-stretch-the-life-of-your-ssd-storage.html

Swapping out a regular hard drive for an SSD is probably the single most effective thing you can do to dramatically improve the performance of an older computer. It will boot up and load programs much, much faster. 

[JSngry]

On 1/8/2018 at 10:47 PM, Dave Garrett said:

Solid state drives (SSDs) do have a limited number of write cycles before they fail, but that number is high enough to where it's usually not something to worry about in normal use. To optimize the lifespan of an SSD, though, there are some settings that should be changed as they are really only needed on a regular hard drive:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2043634/how-to-stretch-the-life-of-your-ssd-storage.html

Swapping out a regular hard drive for an SSD is probably the single most effective thing you can do to dramatically improve the performance of an older computer. It will boot up and load programs much, much faster. 

The guy who build my PC gave me an 100 GB SSD strictly for OS & program files, and 4 TB standard HD strictly for data. His word is that SSDs aren't yet developed to where they really hold up to large data, but they're fast as shit. So I boot and load programs from the SSD, and then save the data to the standard.

So far (about 10 months now), I have been well pleased with this setup. I would recommend it to my family, friends, and to all you neighbors out there in TV land. Y'all ask for Tunny, ok?

 

[Dave Garrett]

On 1/11/2018 at 4:32 PM, JSngry said:

The guy who build my PC gave me an 100 GB SSD strictly for OS & program files, and 4 TB standard HD strictly for data. His word is that SSDs aren't yet developed to where they really hold up to large data, but they're fast as shit. So I boot and load programs from the SSD, and then save the data to the standard.

So far (about 10 months now), I have been well pleased with this setup. I would recommend it to my family, friends, and to all you neighbors out there in TV land. Y'all ask for Tunny, ok?

 

Yeah, that "hybrid" type of setup is very common, not least for the reason that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to have a 100GB SSD just for OS and applications than it is to have a 1TB SSD for everything (I'm not sure how large they're making them now, but the price of a 1TB SSD is already enough to give you pause compared to a regular old spinning HDD, so I'm pretty sure I'd have sticker shock at anything bigger). Plus, the SSD should theoretically last longer in that configuration because you won't be writing to it nearly as often as you would if it was being used to store data. 

[mjzee]

2 hours ago, Dave Garrett said:

Yeah, that "hybrid" type of setup is very common, not least for the reason that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to have a 100GB SSD just for OS and applications than it is to have a 1TB SSD for everything (I'm not sure how large they're making them now, but the price of a 1TB SSD is already enough to give you pause compared to a regular old spinning HDD, so I'm pretty sure I'd have sticker shock at anything bigger). Plus, the SSD should theoretically last longer in that configuration because you won't be writing to it nearly as often as you would if it was being used to store data. 

 

On 1/11/2018 at 4:32 PM, JSngry said:

The guy who build my PC gave me an 100 GB SSD strictly for OS & program files, and 4 TB standard HD strictly for data. His word is that SSDs aren't yet developed to where they really hold up to large data, but they're fast as shit. So I boot and load programs from the SSD, and then save the data to the standard.

So far (about 10 months now), I have been well pleased with this setup. I would recommend it to my family, friends, and to all you neighbors out there in TV land. Y'all ask for Tunny, ok?

 

That's what I have too.  I have an iMac with a "fusion drive," Apple's term for a 1 TB HD with a 128 GB Flash drive integrated with it.  As Wikipedia puts it, "The operating system automatically manages the contents of the drive so the most frequently accessed files are stored on the faster flash storage, while infrequently used items move to or stay on the hard drive. For example, if spreadsheet software is used often, the software will be moved to the flash storage for faster user access. In software, this logical volume speeds up performance of the computer by performing both caching for faster writes and auto tiering for faster reads."  I've had this iMac since 2013, and have been consistently impressed with its speed and reliability (I should knock some wood here).