More Bang for Your Buck: CD Burning

WSVN--With just a few clicks your personalized playlist can be ready to hit the road, but it may not last as long as you'd like.

Keith Shaw: "So as your technology advances, the life span shrinks, and a lot of people don't realize that."

Experts say that many recordable CD's may only have a shelf life life of two to five years.

Keith Shaw: "It's one of one of those things where you never know how long your cd is going to last."

But there are things you can do to keep your CD's spinning and your files from disappearing. Network worlds product tester, Keith Shaw says first, stay away from discount recordable CD's.

Keith Shaw: You can get a stack of fifty for like twenty dollars. Some of that is a little bit lower quality than you would get on something thats, you know, a little bit higher quality brand name type of disk.

Besides the type of CD you buy, it's how you store them that can prolong their life. Shaw says keep your CD's at room temperature and out of direct sunlight.

Keith Shaw: "Don't leave your cd's in the car, for example."

Store CD's in plastic, dust proof cases, and keep them away from anything magnetic that could erase them completely. But most importantly he says, if you have a lot of music, back it up.

Keith Shaw: "Nothing last forever, uh, if you're really interested in saving everything you've got, you know, use a multi-prong strategy in terms of keeping it on your computer, putting them on cd's, and looking into online backups."

Just a few simple tips that won't have you skipping a beat.

Craig Stevens: "Burned DVD's are also at risk. Follow the same precautions and they to will live longer."