Interviews lost

So I'm working on the Chicken Ranch project over the weekend, and at one point I remember I'd promised one of my interview subjects to burn him a copy of his interview on CD so he could keep it for reference. No big deal--I'd burned all the interviews I've done onto CD-R for storage and filing purposes. I find his two disks, put the first one in tray A and a blank in tray B and set the computer copying. Once it's finished, I place the new disk in my stereo to verify the success of the burn. Tracks 1-3 are fine. Track 4, on the other hand, starts off with an overlay of garbled static that knots my stomach. I've heard this before. I put the original in, and yeah, sure enough, the source disk is degrading. In six months none of the tracks will be listenable. I checked the other source disk for the second part of the interview, and it showed the same degradation. Then I looked at the two dozen other interview and image disks filed neatly along the shelf above my desk.

This does not make me happy.

Fortunately, this isn't a major crisis. I've got all of the original Mp3 audio files of all my interviews backed up on hard drives in multiple locations. But the CD collection was there to backup my backups, as I've had really paranoia-inducing experiences with hard drives going blooey! in the past. Nothing's been lost but time. What's annoying is that these weren't el cheapo generic CD-Rs that I used, but name brand. Memorex or somesuch. I don't remember. Don't really care at this point. All that matters is that every single one of those disks is now suspect. I've got to re-burn every one of 'em, to back up the back ups of my back ups. And obviously I'm not about to use regular CD-Rs this time, but rather archival quality, 300-year lifetime rated disks. Those things ain't cheap.

The irony of this is (and there's always irony) that I've burned a number of audio CDs for listening in the car during my daily commute, cheap CD-Rs to protect the source disk from the heat and cold of my car throughout the seasons. I've yet to have any of these audio disks go bad despite the exposure, whereas these going bad are in my climate-controlled office, well-protected and shielded from UV light. Grr...

Now Playing: Billy Joel Songs in the Attic