"Perfect sound forever" - CD sound was always far from perfect and now we know the physical medium is far from "forever".

See http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu.../hd-back.shtml for a note at the bottom - 3 of 100 discs failed in 3-6 years. And those were on quality discs from someone worried about archiving.

Before I read up on media, I went and bought free-after-rebate cakes of disks from the local office supply house. Once I learned, and downloaded tools to check P0 and PI error rates, and found just-burned disks with error rates near the limits (250-300). Buying quality media (TY), this came down to single digits.

I doubt an ebay seller is to worried about media quality, and I use to have the occasional coaster (unreadable right after a successful burn), so failure after 1 year is very possible.

(I now keep all of my photos on 2 sets of optical disks and 2 archive hard drives - 1 set in my safe, 1 set at my in-laws 200 miles away)