I just pulled out the oldest CD-R I have filed from 2005. No problem reading all the files. I was paying a few dollars per CD and burning on a Plextor drive.

You want to get really worried. I have a box of MinDV tapes from a client, most recent one recorded this year and none of them are recoverable. I haven't a clue what magic this person has used on them. We've run DV and DB tapes through on old bulk eraser and simply cannot erase them. I have a suspicion they've spent some time in the glovebox of her car but I'd like to know for sure.

Bob.

I'm trying to remember when i got my first burner. I do remember it was backordered, and after a long wait the store finally made by giving me a new 4x model for the same price as the 2x i had ordered. They were impressed because they had never seen one that blindingly fast before. I got it for less than $400. Blanks were running about $2.50 to $3.00 each at the time. Probably not quite 10 years ago, but close.

I burned hundreds of CD-Rs back then. The only ones that i can't still read are a few audio CD-Rs that i left sitting on my dashboard in the hot sun all day. The rest are all fine.

I remember when I was Director of R&D at Spiratone back in the early days of home videotape. In trying to develop a bulk eraser for Beta and VHS I quickly found out that there was no effective way of erasing the video signal without throwing the kitchen sink at the videocassettes. The best one could do was to magnetically mess up the control track, at the edge of the tape, making the tape unplayable (the control track provided the synchronization signal that allowed the video to be properly displayed; some of the early content protection schemes for OTA pay TV used a similar synch signal suppression method).