PSA: take some time in 2023 to back up your/your family's CD-Rs (and other recordable media) full of memories you threw into storage 10+ years ago; there's a decent chance they've started to rot!

the tenuously thin layer of dyes/adhesives holding the data *will* break down over time, rapidly so if their environment is uncontrolled, the surface was previously nicked/contaminated, or they were cheap ones to begin with

@0x56 got rid of all optical media many many years ago, when SOHO NAS devices started to become affordable.

No data lost due to multiple copies, but I had more troubles reading newer CDR than the old green/gold ones.

@lrosa: I think a lot of newer CD-Rs use the bottom-of-the-barrel technology marketed by CMC Magnetics; there are some brands which use higher-grade dyes, like the Verbatim DataLifePlus discs, but those aren't the ones you'll find in stores.

@raktheundead I used mostly blue dye "Verbatim", but not the category you quoted.

I wrote "Verbatim" with quotes because at that time there were a lot of fake "Verbatim".

Luckily the era of rotating optical media is gone.