Hello FresnoDick,

I know it’s been a while since this was posted but I could no longer resist the nagging urge to reply to this comment.

I have to say that CDs and DVDs are a terribly fragile medium. They scratch easily. The simple act of placing one in your optical drive tray will scratch it. It doesn’t matter how careful you are. Every repetition increases the potential for damage, even if it is minuscule in its effect. A cursory glance at any often-used disc will demonstrate this with many streaks and concentric scratches on its surface.

For this reason, I create ISO images of all the programs and games that require their presence and install them on a virtual CD/DVD player. My discs remain pristine because I never use them. In this way, they are always available as a viable ‘backup’.

CDs and DVDs are great when it comes to storage capacity but fail miserably when it comes to durability. They are both susceptible to scratches, fingerprints, heat, sunlight, flexing and humidity. That is not a very good list when you consider they are subjected to this kind of treatment during common usage, If you you doubt me, just use your favorite search engine to look up CD/DVD care and storage recommendations and you’ll see what I mean. They’ll tell you to keep it in a dry, unlit, cool place.

Note: Flexing is not good for the dye that is used to store your data. Every time you remove a disc from its case, you flex it. It’s nearly unavoidable.

Here’s a thought: Throw a 3.5″ floppy across the room; slide it along the floor if you like. Now do the same thing with a CD/DVD. Which one will most likely still work?

Thank you for your comment. I really love stuff like this that promotes a discussion,
Richard
🙂

A lot simpler…and open source = FREE

http://www.freac.org/

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Both have portable versions to, carry on a USB stick.

Roxio, not free, but does good job of conversion, and the finished files display song title, artist and album in iTunes. Does this product do the same? Dave Ryan implies that it does not.

Hi Dave,

I can’t speak for current versions of RealPlayer but in the past there were many articles connecting RealPlayer and malware and security holes. For those reasons alone I don’t use the product. Even the installer is associated with questionable negative attributes.

Maybe they’ve cleaned up their act in the mean time but in my mind the damage has been done.

Richard