What are the best brand of CDs to use for storing photos?

Question

I am a photographer and I give my clients all their pictures (around 200) on a CD. But half the time I get a call saying that their CD wasn't working properly if at all. Sometimes it will only load half of the pictures and the rest won't show up. Right now I am using hp invent cd-r 52x 700 mb CDs. I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop that I use to burn the pictures onto the CD. Could it be my burner or the CDs I am using? Also I do usually use up all 700 mb of room on the CD so I guess that could be the problem too...... What do you use if you are a photographer?

Answer 1

always burn your CD at low speed. 4x would be the best. 8x maximum. That should fix the problem.

When a CD was burned at 54x , it won't work in many CD readers.

Memorex CD are good.. all major brands are good.



Also , use a cd burner software, do not use windows cd burner, it suck.



+ to change the speed of the burning, you have to specify it in the options of the burning software, before you actually burn your cd. depending of the software that you will be using, there is always a place to specify the speed that you want the Cd to be burned.. it you let it all go automatically, the fastest speed will be choosen by default. here is a place to download some free cd burner softwares, try a few of them untill you find one that fit your need.



http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/cd-burning-freeware.html

Answer 2

As a Photographer I too have had pictures magically erased from CD’s. so some distance as i be attentive to there has been no examine carried out on the existence of a CD-R, a minimum of none that I rather have come throughout. i be attentive to that they have got a constrained existence. that's 2 years or two decades. I returned up all my pictures/documents 2 techniques. (a million) I burn them onto a DVD for ordinary accessibility – ‘non everlasting storage’. Now a days DVD's will run you as low as a greenback based in sales. that's the main fee useful and least perplexing. (2) i've got bought an exterior tensepersistent in easy terms for pictures – ‘long term’. stressful drives are the main good and have been shown to final for an prolonged time. once I replenish a tensepersistent I save it in a heat dry place...Mine are in my closet. the only subject with stressful drives is that are very gentle. Bump it too stressful and knock the disks out of alignment and your finding at $a hundred-$two hundred to get somebody to get well your documents....So be very careful. I rap mine in that eggshell cloth you may purchase to your mattress. you specially elect to returned up your pictures/documents in greater then one region. you have heard the asserting..."in no way positioned all your eggs in one basket!" wish I helped!

Answer 3

All the other comments are good.

One thing you need to know is that even the best CD will only archive images (or any files for that matter) for about 10 years. Also, as technology changes, the availability of media readers will change as well and you may have perfectly good data but no way to retrieve it. You will need to convert data to the newer technology as it comes out. Remember Sony Beta tapes or 5-1/4" floppy drives?

Answer 4

Brand names are less important than the source. Having said that, I have always had good success with Sony and Imation (3M) and TDK brand ones.



What I find more important is where you buy your CDs. I stopped buying them at my local Target store. Too many duds. Frankly, I don't think their warehouse is climate controlled or something. I've bought the same exact brands from Wal-Mart and Office Depot, and had no problems.



It could be that your cd burner is slightly out of alignment? Some CD drives are more forgiving than others.



Frankly, I've been experiementing with LightScribe (http://www.lightscribe.com/) and I think you can do some really cool stuff with burning images on the top of the CD. HP and TDK and Verbatium all make LightScribe media. If you buy a second drive (say an external USB model - that should be easy to add on), you might look into one that can do LightScribe.



PS: If you get into DVDs, I would stick with DVD-R. Many devices today can use DVD+R, but those that can do DVD+R can typically do DVD-R too, but if your device only does DVD-R, then a DVD+R isn't going to work.



PS: USB Flash drives are cheap enough these days, particularly if you buy in quanity. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to switch to Flash drives. You can even buy them with your logo printed on them, etc. The down side of these is that they can be erased, but you could encourage the client to burn them to a CD themselves. Just a thought.



PPS: I use mkisofs (a command ported to Windows from Unix) to make the ISO image. This allows me to put both Joliet (used by Windows) and RockRidge (used by Unix and Macs) extensions on, and make it ISO9660 compliant. Some Windows based CD burning programs just ignore whatever parts of ISO9660 they don't like, which makes a CD that claims to be ISO9660 compliant, but isn't. Some CD reading software is okay with this, some barfs on it.



mkisofs -iso-level 1 -J -R -p "your name" -P "your name" -V "volname" -o file.iso ./directory



"volname" is the volume name - do yourself a favor and stick to 8 characters, lower case. The -J says to add Joliet extensions, the -R says to add Rock Ridge.



Then you can use any software you want to burn the ISO image to the CD.



mkisofs is part of cdrtools, formerly known as cdrecord:



http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/cdrecord.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdrtools



You can find various graphical "front end" programs for cdrtools on SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/ - it is not for everyone - it is a command-line type program, but it works well for me.

Answer 5

go to my computer and right click on the cd burner then go to the setting and then you'll be able to change the write speed. and you should always check the cd to make sure that all the photos are working.

Answer 6

Heed my words, there is only one choice:



CDs that use 24K Gold



...NOT aluminum as most do. I learned the hard way and lost many pictures. I only use gold!





Ultradisc is what I use:



http://www.mofi.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=0&idproduct=94



These are available as well:



http://www.delkin.com/products/archivalgold/scratcharmor.html

Answer 7

Delkin Archival gold are good



http://www.delkin.com

Answer 8

you can use a CD for a long time by securing properly.