OT: Optical Media and Archiving

dvdude wrote on 4/26/2004, 8:38 AM

Not wishing to be perceived as a scaremonger but....

Check this out

I have a number of CD's I created with my first burner (Ricoh 2x2x6) that still read fine - maybe it's time to refresh 'em though.

Comments

Jay Gladwell wrote on 4/26/2004, 8:44 AM

From the article:

"The world's No 1 supplier of CD-Rs, Imation, talks of "saving precious digital photo memories" - exactly what many people think they're doing. Semar Majid, its technical marketing executive, hasn't heard of any ageing problems. "Optical media should last between 30 and 200 years," he says, "but it's dependent on storage conditions and how you handle it." He suggests transferring important photos to DVD, and keeping on moving to new formats."

J--

TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/26/2004, 8:53 AM

My first CD's burned (from late '98-99) are Fuji, Imation, * Memorex. All work fine! :) Well, except for those my sond got to when I wasn't home one night & he was 2. :'(

Jsnkc wrote on 4/26/2004, 9:00 AM

There have been a lot of articles about this lately, there are also a number on what is called "DVD Rot" where the layers on the DVD actually start to come apart after a very short period of time.
The truth is that optical media like CD's and DVD's are still a relatively new thing and there is really know way to know exactly how long they will last. There have been many "predictions" on the life of CD and DVD media but there are still no definate answers.
I know all of the data that I have opn optical media that is essential for me to have for a very long time I make copied of it every year or so just to get it on fresh media and to make sure that when I need to use it, it will be there. People used to think that tape formats like VHS would last for a lifetime when they first came out, but that is hardly the case. We see tapes all the time that were recorded back in the 80's and they are already showing very noticeable signs of degredation.

Bottom line is if you have stuff that you need to get back to, you need to not only back it up, but keep backing it up periodically to make sure it's there when you need it.

On a side note, I have tons of CD's that I burned in the late 90's (i used to be a DJ) on pretty much all of them I stupidly used paper labels. Now basically every one of the labels has started to peel off making the discs pretty much unuseable.

johnmeyer wrote on 4/26/2004, 9:18 AM

See my comments in a parallel post here:

Ritek G04 Quality