If you've tried listening to any of your old CDs lately, if you even own them anymore, you may have noticed they won't play. That's what happened to mine, anyway.
CD players have long since given up on most of the burned mixes I made in college. (In some cases, this is for the best.) And while most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection—so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994—isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.
"All of the modern formats weren't really made to last a long period of time," said Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress. "They were really more developed for mass production.""If you want to really kill your discs, just leave them in your car over the summer."
France and her colleagues are trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. This is a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years but won't say how. And so: we know a CD's basic composition—there's a plastic polycarbonate layer, a metal reflective layer with all the data in it, and then the coating on top—but it's impossible to tell just from looking at a disc how it will age. (...)
There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity.
Then there's the wear and tear that's more in line with what you'd probably expect to happen over time—like scratches and exposure to extreme temperatures. ("If you want to really kill your discs, just leave them in your car over the summer. That's a really great way to destroy them," France says.)
But it turns out that plenty of people don't know how to care for CDs properly in the first place. For instance, the best way to hold a CD is to pinch the hole in the middle, and the top surface of the CD—the side that faces up when it's playing—is more delicate than the bottom. Again, France: "People are generally more concerned about the scratches on the bottom, but actually you can get quite a lot more damage when you get scratches on the top layer because it goes through and impacts the metal reflective layer. So quite often you find people are really careful not to put their hands underneath, but holding it in the middle is better."
It's also better not to muck up the top of your CDs with labels—the adhesive creates chemical reactions that quickly eat up data—or even permanent markers. "The moment you start to write on that top layer, you're setting yourself up for degradation," France said.
by Adrienne LaFrance, Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Adrienne LaFrance
CD players have long since given up on most of the burned mixes I made in college. (In some cases, this is for the best.) And while most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there's really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection—so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994—isn't just aging; it's dying. And so is yours.
"All of the modern formats weren't really made to last a long period of time," said Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress. "They were really more developed for mass production.""If you want to really kill your discs, just leave them in your car over the summer."France and her colleagues are trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. This is a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years but won't say how. And so: we know a CD's basic composition—there's a plastic polycarbonate layer, a metal reflective layer with all the data in it, and then the coating on top—but it's impossible to tell just from looking at a disc how it will age. (...)
There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc's layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity.
Then there's the wear and tear that's more in line with what you'd probably expect to happen over time—like scratches and exposure to extreme temperatures. ("If you want to really kill your discs, just leave them in your car over the summer. That's a really great way to destroy them," France says.)
But it turns out that plenty of people don't know how to care for CDs properly in the first place. For instance, the best way to hold a CD is to pinch the hole in the middle, and the top surface of the CD—the side that faces up when it's playing—is more delicate than the bottom. Again, France: "People are generally more concerned about the scratches on the bottom, but actually you can get quite a lot more damage when you get scratches on the top layer because it goes through and impacts the metal reflective layer. So quite often you find people are really careful not to put their hands underneath, but holding it in the middle is better."
It's also better not to muck up the top of your CDs with labels—the adhesive creates chemical reactions that quickly eat up data—or even permanent markers. "The moment you start to write on that top layer, you're setting yourself up for degradation," France said.
by Adrienne LaFrance, Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Adrienne LaFrance
