> Not solving your current problems, but there are reportedly severe > differences in longevity depending on the dye (and thus the brand > of CD-R blanks). I saw a recommendation for Kodak, so I record > backups onto Kodak and also at least one other brand.
I had a longer discussion about this with a friend of mine. Unfortunately Kodak stopped making CD-Rs some years ago. Alternatives are rare - TDK was mentioned, but we both have packs of TDK disks bought 2 years ago, unused, which are distinctly cloudy on the recording surface now, obviously some chemical reaction with the disk surface and who knows. They have been stored in their sleeves as they were manufactured, shrinkwrap not even opened. Good dye maybe - rubbish otherwise. There are many factors which go into longevity, the dye is only one. The fact that manufacturers change processes, materials etc every few months makes it impossible to get anything decent in the long run. You're also restricted to what you can actually buy, no good of some obscure place has something better. Most shops here sell rubbish - they tell you to expect 10-20% failure rate before it's even burnt (excuse me?). Every single one sells Verbatim = Imation as "top end of the scale", when I asked whether they had something better it was obvious that none of them had any clue whatsoever. Very few manufacturers have published their longevity test results, Kodak + TDK included, the others were obviously only selling promises in the first place. It's impossible to do anything similar yourself. Bottom line: we're stuffed. Your burner is also a big factor - it'll have to be well-calibrated. It can be observed that e.g. Sony CRX19x/2xx models lose their calibration optimum and start burning errors after about 300 disks burnt. The other stuff on the market is almost certainly the same, with the cheap stuff being worse. The best would probably be to record everything twice on different brands and types of media, on short + long strategy types for example. Use your best guess as for what's good quality at the time, there isn't much more real info to go on than how professional the top print looks. Think ahead and record md5 sums. Operate on the assumption that you can't buy decent quality media today. As for your problem, there is no iso9660.fsck. Try as many different drives, especially burners, to read off your data. Use new, not used, equipment. Try a very very old cdrom drive. Use dd to try and read single blocks, piece your important data together with a hex editor if need be. Unfortunately, it seems CD-Rs aren't any better than tapes. Copy your disks onto new media every few years... Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]