Disk Deteriorisation?

[Jamsh]

I have been using 5.1.1 Live CD for some months and it has performed perfectly until last week when I noticed that my printer was not being recognised. I also tried a new Persistent Home Directory but could only get as far as 96% of the Linux file system being installed when it stops. It does the same thing every time I try.
I was wondering if there is some kind of quality loss, over time, in the disk or ???????

[Harry Kuhman]

Certainly not "Deteriorisation" caused by Knoppix software. But some people do treat discs harshly and scratch them. And I've had many packages of Sony CRDs, two different product codes (and one gold and one silver style), and every single Sony CD went bad over time (http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/2560/sonycdr7pb.jpg), except for the ones that were bad as soon as I opened the package. If you're waiting for someone to suggest burning another copy, then yea, burn another copy. Do it on a different brand of CD if you have another brand available. And be sure to burn at low speed, high speed burns are known to cause problems and are likely more inclined to have this problem. And you might even try just looking at the disc to see if you can see a problem. Not all problems with the disc may be visable to the naked eye, but some are, as you can see in the above link.

[Jamsh]

I decided to bypass the 'burning' process and have ordered a CD from Land of Linux for only £1.70. I'll report back on my experience with this.

[Harry Kuhman]

I decided to bypass the 'burning' process and have ordered a CD from Land of Linux for only £1.70. I'll report back on my experience with this.
I personally think that that's always a bad move, unless you know that the disc is "pressed", not burned. And with the exception of the mass runs done for trade shows like TAG, most Knoppix discs are burned.

Those who sell this free software generally do it to make a profit. That's perfectly legal. But since they are driven by a profit motive, they generally do high speed burns. You don't really expect that someone selling you that £1.70 disc is taking more than 20 minutes to burn it and doing so on quality media, do you? The disc may suffer the same problem or not even boot at all on all systems, and from what we already know your system may already have optics that don't do well with a less than perfect slow speed burn. You apparently already know how ot burn the disc, since you seem to have made your first one. You didn't say what speed it was burnt at. But I really expect that if it was made at high speed then you could resolve all of your problems just by making another disc at 4x speed.