Some of the CDRWs I burned 7 years ago aren't being read by my current
(XP) computer.

How can I help it identify them?

john

"john" <guuuus@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, the obvious thing to try, is to try them on a different
computer. If that works, you can re-burn them, and get them to your
own computer. However, while you should definitely try that, the
likelihood is that the discs went bad.

--
Joel Crump

This ain't even his land, the Indians was here first.

Joel skrev:

I will try that.

But I should have mentioned: The discs do work on my car stereo.

john

Hi John,

You can try IsoBuster (www.smart-projects.net)

Good luck!
Erich

"john" <guuuus@gmail.com> wrote:

In that case, I'd be very surprised if all computer drives couldn't
read them.

--
Joel Crump

This ain't even his land, the Indians was here first.

john wrote:
Sorry for not answering the question (I see other have answered it well).

But I should point out that this isn't what CD-RWs are meant for. They
are meant for short-term storage. If you want to burn things for
long-term storage, you should get some good CD-Rs from a good
manufacturer such as Taiyo Yuden.

NRen2k5 wrote:

Are you sure CD-R's last longer than CD-RW's? My understanding is that
the data on a CD-R (or DVD-R) is burnt into a dye layer, whereas the
data on a CD-RW (or DVD-RW) is melted into an alloy layer. As a
chemist, I would expect most dyes to fade with time. Hunting on the web
for advice on archiving, I only find suggestions such as to keep disks
out of direct sunlight, store on edge, etc. without hard numbers on what
lifetime to expect for any media. So for important files I tend to keep
one copy on CD-R, one on DVD-R and one on DVD-RW. (I'm risk-averse.)

Charles Russell wrote:
Cd-RW is designed for short-term storage rather than long-term. When the
two conflict, I tend to believe design over the underlying science.