I have looked in to this, and it is my understanding that for archival purposes, a high quality CD media will last 50 years or more, while a bad media will last 25 years or more. Not 5 years. You can't trust brand names because they are constantly changing where they get their media. There are in fact, less then 10 factories where the media is made. Brand Name suppliers switch around all the time trying to get the best deal. Personally, I doubt if I am going to be too concerned about this in 25 years, so I stopped worrying about it ! Rode The NOSPIN Group >Does anyone know which manufacturers of CD-R/CD-RW media are the best? >It seems like everyone in their brother is in on the action. If a burn a >CD, I don't want to discover it won't play in 5 years. Visit our website regularly for FAQs, articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more http://freepctech.com