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Faulty DVDs, September-November 2005

We have discovered that some of the DVDs written and shipped by the ESO Science Archive Facility between September and November 2005 are defective. These DVDs may generate random reading errors when an attempt is made to access the data written on them. We stress that this problem is random - the same disk in the same DVD reader may be readable at a certain time but not at another. The fact that one of these DVDs is readable now does not guarantee that it will be readable in the future.

This problem has been traced to a specific set of DVD blanks used since mid-September 2005 until 9 November 2005.

Since we do not keep track of these DVD disk identification numbers during our disk writing process, we cannot tell who received defective DVDs. However, the users can determine this by simply examining each DVD. Suspect DVDs can be clearly identified by looking at the bottom side of each disk: they have a white inner ring which is clearly labeled with a string beginning with DVD-R1 C-180101U28A...., as shown on the picture below:

Disks with any other label (including the similarly looking "R2 C-180101U28A..." label) or no label do not have known problems.

As soon as possible, please examine all DVDs you have received from ESO between September and November 2005. If any of the DVDs is from the bad batch, please request replacement disks using the following web form.

Our goal is to replace each defective disk with a new reliable DVD unless we are explicitly told that this is not necessary. In some cases, unfortunately, it may not be possible to provide the science pipeline products from written to the defective DVDs. If this is not possible, the users will be notified. If the user urgently needs the raw data from a defective disk, please contact us at archive@eso.org for immediate assistance.

We apologize for any inconvenience this incident may have caused. Rest assured that we are taking active measures to assure that this particular problem does not occur again.

ESO Archive Team