When Being Cheap Doesn't Pay
As I began to set up the new computer last night, I pulled out the backups I made of my HD on my notebook before I formatted it. I started to copy them to the Dell, and CD #1 failed. Then CD #2 failed. I was worried. While I didn't need much of anything on the CD's, I still wanted to retrieve the data. So I switched to restoring from backup set #2 (made using a different brand of CD-Rs). CD #1 worked. Then CD #2 worked. As did CDs #3-9. I never went back to the first set.
Seems that some the cheap FAR CD-Rs really are that - cheap. Unfortunately, it's hard to distinguish good cheap CD-Rs from bad cheap CD-Rs. We'll see what happens.