(Article) The first generation of CDs is already rotting and dying

set wrote on 2/20/2017, 9:16 PM

Digital media is a double-edged sword. Digital data itself can be duplicated an unlimited number of times without any generational loss – meaning it can theoretically last forever. But digital storage on physical media is subject to failure – and that failure can render the data inaccessible. In other words, archivists (including you) have to transfer data before the media fails.

And we’re already entering an age when one of the most popular formats is reaching the start point for common failures.

A report by Tedium (republished by Motherboard) demonstrates one of the most alarming failures. Some media, evidently using faulty dyes, can fail in under ten years, via something unpleasantly dubbed “disc rot.”

http://cdm.link/2017/02/a-generation-of-cds-is-already-rotting-and-dying/

Comments

ushere wrote on 2/21/2017, 2:04 AM

i've been suffering brain rot for the last ten years ;-(

i've had cd's fail after a few years - mainly cheapo ones supplied by clients, but among my friends that's not a rare occurrence.

the only thing guaranteed to last reasonably well is controlled hard copy.

vkmast wrote on 2/21/2017, 10:29 AM

As for rot, the later generations may not regard the generational loss of us earlier baby boomers as much of a loss, but data from at least some of us needs to be transferred before failing?😎

JJKizak wrote on 2/23/2017, 7:02 AM

I assume this is relation to "burned" discs and not "commercial" discs.

JJK

brianw wrote on 2/23/2017, 6:36 PM

I just dug out a disk given to me in 1995 by a friend who was showing off his latest toy, a 2x high speed CD burner. The disk was a Maxell CD -R74H marked as suitable for 2 and 4 speed drives. It was a compilation of various programs of the day (probably pirated). I slipped it into the DVD drive on my WinTen machine and while it recognized it as a CD it recorded it as blank. Then tried an older computer with XP and a fairly new DVD drive and away it went. As far as I could tell read all data perfectly. I didn't actually install any of the programs but many seemed to be happy with the modern OS. Did have a bit of a memory trip by firing up XTree Gold. What magic that was, all those colors, (count 'em, 8)

Brian

EricLNZ wrote on 2/23/2017, 7:48 PM

I assume this is relation to "burned" discs and not "commercial" discs.

JJK

But even commercial discs can give problems as I recall news items a few years ago about layers coming unstuck.

brianw wrote on 2/23/2017, 8:43 PM

Stop Press. I think the real problem will be finding readers for old optical media. Who hasn"t a pile of little used but dead CD and DVD units. I have just changed the latest DVD burner in the Win Ten machine for a four year old one and all the non playing CDs are working fine. Not surprisingly XTREE-Gold does not run in Win Ten..What o do with the newer burner. It still burns and plays music and new data CDs and DVDs, just wont read some older CDs.

Cheers Brian

ushere wrote on 2/25/2017, 5:21 PM

this is the price we pay for progress. i had boxes of 8 track, reel to reel, and sundry other old 'hi-tech' products lying around for ages before deciding that there was no hope of ever retrieving the information from them again.

a few years ago i dumped all my hi/low band tapes, along with the 1" spot reels that had been sitting around for, well, a long time.

i don't doubt digital will head the same way. i have quite a few ide hard drives around (with a dock thankfully), and other hardware which will soon add to the growing electronic waste problems in asia and elsewhere ;-(

NicholasL wrote on 2/26/2017, 1:54 PM

Wow, I remember when CD's were first introduced and they said they would last "forever". So, sounds like some of LaserDisc's problems ("disc rot") predicted an eventual failure mode for CD's just as well.

I had a buddy of mine had several Music CD's got ruined because they were in a damp area and the silver layer corroded out, these were factory CD's bought from a store.

I've had a few recordable DVD's ruined because in my computer room some sunlight would leak-in through the curtains, after a few years I noticed the top layer of the DVD-r was noticeable darker from cumulative sunlight exposure and it was ruined. And this was not direct sunlight but sunlight through a window and then through some miniblinds / curtains.

As for the question of "how to read the media later" that is a separate problem than the media itself. but I think the 12-cm optical disk has enough longevity behind it (CD to DVD to BluRay to 4K all using the same mechanical size) that it should be _fairly_ easy to find a working drive to read it back. Example: modern Blu Ray players can still read older CD-audio format discs.

I just recently got a BluRay burner and tried some of the M-Disc BD-R's for long-term archiving of data. The problem is.. the claims of longevity cannot really be verified until after-the-fact when its too late.

Hard drives are cheap now, and seem to be the cheapest $/GB of storage. I can buy a 1-TB hard drive for only ~ $80 USD, but if I fill it up with data and let that sit for 10 years, after all that time with the mechanical parts left dormant will it still spin-up and be able to read back ?

Just curious for comparison, if anybody knows: how are old 8mm Data Tapes holding up after all these years ?

JJKizak wrote on 2/27/2017, 8:02 AM

The Egyptians had the right idea for longevity---carve everything into stone.

JJK

John_Cline wrote on 2/27/2017, 5:42 PM

I copied all 1,000+ of my data CDs and DVDs to an Enterprise-class hard drive a few years ago, then I copied all the data to a second hard drive which I keep off-site. All of the discs were still readable at that point, so my data is relatively safe. I spin the drives up periodically just to make sure the bearings don't seize up, although, this hasn't really been a problem with drives made in the last 10 years or so.