Originally posted by doublea
Any CDs that are branded will be fine as long as it would be free from scratches or cracks. CDs are generally can hold data for about 25 years. They are safe from any magnetic materials unlike ordinary tape catridges. Just when writing to a disk be sure to verify from the application that the files written are the same from the files read.
that's for CDs

and generally, people associate the quality of CDs with that of CD-Rs and CR-RWs - which is misleading.

generic CD-R / RWs generally will only last upto 20 months.

branded ones will last for around 5 years or more.

as a general rule, those for long-term storage should be checked once in a while for data corruption.