Which is better?

Question

I've seen before these types of CD:
1. Typical CD-R and CD-RW
2. A type of CD-R and CD-RW where the shiny mirror-like (underside) is in DARK color, instead of the typical silvery one.
3. A type of CD-R and CD-RW where the whole piece of CD is BLACK in color, as if it's made with black plastic resins instead of the usual transparent type.

I am looking for the type of CD-R and CD-RW that have the highest level of physical quality (not easily scratched, etc) and highest level of data preservation (data can be kept for very long without losing quality - something like datalifeplus by Verbatim).

Tell me:
1. Of all these different types of CD-R and CD-RW, which one is the best in the 2 qualities I mentioned? Please explain comprehensively why between each of them (this is where I determine who gets the 10 points).
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the CD speed between 4x to 52x?

Note: I won't give 10 points for simple shortcut answers.

Answer 1

The link below is to an exhaustive article that covers the relative reliability/longevity of different color dye & reflective surface types. I recommend reading the entire thing- cutting & pasting would be a disservice to the author.

As for speeds, faster burn times are for human convenience, but don't increase reliability. There's no advantage to burning at 16x or 32x, except shortening your wait time.

The bottom line is to avoid using CD-RW for long-term storage, stick to -R (write once) media. Gold reflective surface discs are the best choice, superior to the more common silver.

Burn backup copies of anything important, and cycle your data/photos to new media types every few years. You don't want stuff on CD-R 40 years from now, any more than someone wants data these days on a Bernouli Box or for a more recent example, LS-120 superdisk. The time to migrate to newer storage technology is BEFORE your current archive media becomes obsolete and the hardware required to read it vanishes from Ebay.

At this point, DVD+R and DVD-R have surpassed CD-R as the preferred storage medium, that's what a capacity of 4.7GB vs 700K will do. And with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray coming out this year, even DVD recordable media is considered on borrowed time. It's a vicious cycle- by the time a technology is mature and widely available, something else has supplanted it.

Answer 2

CD-R is a write once read only medium (though the whole disk does not have to be written in one go) and retains a high level of compatibility with standard CD readers (unlike CD-RW which can be rewritten but has much lower compatibility and the discs are considerably more expensive). CD-RWs represent the next step in CD technology after the CD-R. These discs use the same standard size of CD-Rs but are more expensive than them. CD-RWs allow many writes onto the compact disc, in contrast to the WORM CD-R. A Z-CLV recorder rated at "52X", for example, would write at 20X on the innermost zone and then progressively step up to 52X at the outer rim. Some drives also limit the maximum read speed to lower values such as 40x. The reasoning is that it is safe to assume that a blank CD fresh off the spindle will be clear of any structural damage, but the same assumption will not hold true for every disc inserted for reading. In the late 1990s, buffer underruns became a very common problem as high-speed CD recorders began to appear in home and office computers, which—for a variety of reasons—often could not muster the I/O performance to produce a data stream to keep the recorder steadily fed. The recorder, should it run short, would be forced to halt the recording process, leaving a truncated track that often renders the disc useless.

Answer 3

Gee! to begin with, the points mean so much to me! As for your question, its not a matter of what the cd blanks look like! Keep one thing ONLY in mind! No matter what you buy, stay away from bulk pack off brand blanks! Staples for instance sells blanks but I have found that sometimes a third of them can be defective! The appearance will tell you nothing about a blank! The bottom line is simply this, in order to assure yourself of good quality cd blanks, buy brand name such as memorex, sony, etc! You will find you are money ahead in the long run!

Answer 4

Silver means it's best for music.
Blue means best for data.
I'm not sure where all the other colors fit in but that was the original scheme :-)