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Data Storage

Burned CDs Last 5 years Max -- Use Tape? 664

Posted by CmdrTaco from the been-there-before dept.
Lam1969 writes "Computerworld has interviewed Kurt Gerecke, an IBM storage expert and physicist who claims burned CDs only have a two to five-year lifespan, depending on the quality of the CD. From the article: "The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data 'shifting' on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam." Gerecke recommends magnetic tapes to store pictures, videos and songs."
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Burned CDs Last 5 years Max -- Use Tape? More

Burned CDs Last 5 years Max -- Use Tape?

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  • I guess it depends on how you treat them (Score:3, Informative)

    by bilbravo ( 763359 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:18PM (#14436399) Homepage
    I have some CDs that are burned copies (although I'd call this great quality cds, not cheap storebrand with no backing), stored in a CD wallet case that are easily over 5 years old... still work great.
    • Ditto, but they are data CDs & pushing 7 years old. Only read problems are ones I've inflicted (scratches, etc)..

      Jaysyn

      • I've had the problem of a few of my burned CDs flaking off the reflective surface. I tried slicing it off of another CD-R, but to no avail.
    • I have both audio and data CDs I burned way back in, what, 1996? They still work perfectly. The first audio CD I burned at that time has spent the last 10 years in my car in the heat of Mexico. Still works perfectly.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • If you say so... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:19PM (#14436404) Homepage
    Magnetic tape? Ok

    Anyone know where I can download an MP3 jukebox for my Vic 20?

  • Conflicts with other studies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:19PM (#14436412)
    Haven't other studies confirmed much longer lifetimes in the past for CD-R? After all, we've had CD burners for longer than 2-5 years. Is this only a surprise because absolutely nobody has ever gone back and tried to read an old disc? Somehow I'm still doubtful of his conclusions.

  • 5 years max? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blanktek ( 177640 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:19PM (#14436416)
    I have CDs that have lasted 10 years with no errors. Obviously 5 years is not the maximum life. Perhaps the maximum EXPECTED life.

    • Depends how you define lifetime (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:46PM (#14436829)
      Keep in mind that CDs have a ton of error-correction coding on them. You could lose probably 20%-30% of the bits and still have a working CD. I suspect by "lifetime" the guy means when dye layer starts to deteriorate. Error correction can get you past that point, but you end up with a CD that reads fine one month, then "suddenly" develops dozens of bad sectors.

      Most serious photographers I know re-burn their archives every one or two years.

      • Keep in mind that CDs have a ton of error-correction coding on them. You could lose probably 20%-30% of the bits and still have a working CD. I suspect by "lifetime" the guy means when dye layer starts to deteriorate. Error correction can get you past that point, but you end up with a CD that reads fine one month, then "suddenly" develops dozens of bad sectors.

        Is there any software that allows you to check on the status of the dye layer? It would be good to know before hand that you're using nearly all the
        • Is there any software that allows you to check on the status of the dye layer? It would be good to know before hand that you're using nearly all the error correction on a disk so that you can replace it when you have the chance.

          Yes. At least for DVDs. But you have to have a drive that supports it. Plextor burners typically come with software that can report error rates. Then there is KProbe [cdrlabs.com] for some other drives, read the docs for the details.

          As a rule of thumb, when purchasing blank media, prefer "made

    • Re:5 years max? (Score:3, Informative)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) *
      I have CDs that have lasted 10 years with no errors. Obviously 5 years is not the maximum life. Perhaps the maximum EXPECTED life.

      I've had CDs that were about 5 years old that went bad. They went from the burner to a CD book, and maybe 2 to 5 out of about 100 were bad. I didn't investigate, or maybe even screwed up the burn (win2k), and I used good media, mostly Mitsui.

      I believe the tape recommendation to be absurd. If CDs are in the though process, there must not be too much data here. Especially in th

      • Re:5 years max? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
        Just to make your comment more explicit, hard drives are cheaper not only than the tape drives, but are also often cheaper than the tapes. You can get hard drives of fairly large capacity around fifty cents a gigabyte. A 200GB Sony AIT4 tape is at least $50. Granted, that's half the price of the hard drive, not a very good example! However, the drives start at $2400. That's a lot of hard drives! A 7-pack of 40GB DLT tapes (kind of useless) is $150 or so. That's around hard drive prices...

    • Re:5 years max? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @01:06PM (#14437074)
      Maximum life is irrelevent. I could draw a picture in the sand with a stick and protect it from the wind for several years -- that doesn't make it a good media to store things in.

      If your goal is to preserve data, and there is a 10% chance that exposure to moderate heat will render the media useless, it's time to pick another media.

    • Re:5 years max? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gihan_ripper ( 785510 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @01:07PM (#14437090) Homepage
      What does that mean? By 'maximum expected life' you surely mean the expected life of the medium, that is, the mean of the lifetimes of a good sample set of CDs. When a lifetime is quoted, e.g. for lightbulbs, the manufacturer doesn't guarantee that the product will fail when its expected lifetime expires!

    • Re:5 years max? (Score:3, Informative)

      by lawpoop ( 604919 )
      10 years ago, the CDs you were burning were of higher quality, were burned at a slower speed (probably 1x, 2x, or at max 4x), and the burning drive you were using was of a higher quality. You were using high-end equipment and media. Those CDs survived.

      I bet that a consumer-grade CD burned last year on a consumer-grade drive purchased last year would not last as long.

  • CD-Rs with a 100 year warranty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OverDrive33 ( 468610 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:21PM (#14436438) Homepage Journal
    We've known that CD-Rs will degrade for a long time. Hispace [hispace.com] have recently launched a new range of CD-Rs aimed at digital photographers. These disks use 24 caret gold to help add stability to the disks. As a result, they come with a 100 year warranty.

    Your porn will be around for decades after all!!

  • I can attest to that... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:22PM (#14436462)
    The wedding photographer for my wedding gave me a DVD of the video + photos. After about two years the DVDs were so degraded that I could not a single DVD player would recognize them. And that's with light usage... Now I keep important DVD as images on an external hard disk.

    • Re:I can attest to that... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jridley ( 9305 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:50PM (#14436873)
      I have had many problems with DVDs. I've had media that degrade quickly, and also writers that cause discs to degrade quickly. Every disc I wrote in late 2003 is bad. They started going bad after only a few months (in some cases, days).

      I switched both burners and media and now have no problems. However, I still do a 100% verify, and don't totally trust DVD-R. For stuff I *really* want backed up, I put a PAR2 set on the disc, and I burn both DVD and at least one CD copy for offsite.

      BTW I found that some really crappy DVD-ROM drives will read almost anything. All of those hundreds of bad discs that I have? I bought a shitty CompUSA DVD-ROM drive for $35, and it will read them all, even though NO other drive I own will read them (I tried Sony, 2 NEC, 1 Pioneer and 1 Lite-On DVD-R drives, plus Teac, Pioneer DVD-ROM drives). I have NO reasonable theory why this is, but the damn thing just reads anything. I'm glad of it too. I discovered this when I realized that my shitty $40 mintek set-top DVD player would play the discs and "better" players choked, so I decided to try a crappy DVD-ROM drive. So I can now make new copies of the messed-up discs.
      • Mod the parent up, it's informative. There seems to be a problem with DVDs, but not CDs.

        I have the same experience:
        - Virtually no problems with CDs. I copied around 10 old CDs back to harddisk, one read error due to a scrached surface.

        - all my DVD-Rs from 2003 are bad. I can read perhaps 50% of the files.

        - Unlike the parent, I have no experience with newer DVD writers.

      • Re:I can attest to that... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by aonaran ( 15651 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @01:22PM (#14437273) Homepage
        Usually the reason why crappy DVD-Video players play back things that don't play in other players isn't because the pickup is better, but because the decoder is more tolerant of non-standard discs. Some discs that play on PCs and these cheap players just won't play on the better ones because the disc itself is not made to the proper DVD spec. Most often I've seen either improperly encoded video or missing AUDIO_TS folders. Next to that is not having the files organized properly on the disc, or the wrong file system (ISO vs UDF)


  • I've known about this for years...that's why I store all my important data exclusively on punch cards. Nothing will degrade my precious bales and bales of punch cards! My data will outlast the Apocalypse!

    See, look at all these wonderful punched cards....they'll last fore...waitaminit...where did all these silverfish come from???

    NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Nothing lasts forever (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:23PM (#14436469)
    When I first asked this question of how long CDs will last, I was told about 70 years.
    I was also told that to lengthen a CDs shelf life, always store them vertically in a cool dry place, and clean them from the inside ring to the outer edge in a straight line.

    I found an article from the Optical Storage Technology Association and they say it depends on the initial CD quality and handling.
    According to this article, unrecorded CDRs last about 5-10 years, manufacturers claim recorded CDRs 50-200 years and recorded CDRWs 20-100 years.

    More info: http://www.osta.org/technology/cdqa13.htm [osta.org]

    • Re:Nothing lasts forever (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:44PM (#14436806)
      Also do not touch the coated side of the disc. Cleaning the read-side isn't generally going to degrade it in any way, even if it's scratched those can be buffed out of the clear plastic. The problem is the other side of the disc. The colored/laminated side is the material that gets written to. It's not protected with a thick plastic coating like a real pressed CD. Touching, mashing, or exposing that laminated side to pretty much anything out of the ordinary will shorten the life of the disc.
  • I just checked some 8-9 year old CD-R disks, and they are reading fine, no read errors. I store them in a metal drawer (dark, cool). Does IBM still make tapes and drives?
  • Great, we're back to punch cards again.

    My understanding is that magnetic systems like tape and HD slowly de-magnify over a long enough period. Is there any other digital storage mechanism that doesn't degrade in optimal storage conditions over long enough time frames (ie 100 years plus)?

    I have no idea if I'll ever have anything worth keeping for that long, but I'd like to be able to do it if the need arises. And there's always pr0n backups to think of.

  • Dutch Study? (Score:3, Informative)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:27PM (#14436530)
    I can't remember all of the details, but I am sure there was a Dutch group who took a sample of all of the available CDs at the time, burnt data onto them, put them in storage for 2 years and then re-tested the disks quality. Their results showed that all of the disks had significant degredation.

    OK .. here is a link to a news report of that study

    http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7751 [cdfreaks.com] This link includes a link to the original Dutch article

    To quote:

    "The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers."

     
  • Last year (2004) I went back and copied all my CDs over to DVD, dating back to 1999 (well, oldest one still of any value). This was 100+ CDs, all stored in a standard CD wallet, treated nicely and kept in normal room conditions. None were unreadable, in fact the 1999 TDKs were all read at max speed. The noname CDs I bought in later years spun up and down and up and down but finally read all data as well. With some clean-up it didn't end up as more than about a dozen DVDs. On the other hand, you can destroy

  • Some things that degrade CDs (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billosaur ( 927319 ) * <wgrotherNO@SPAMoptonline.net> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:27PM (#14436537) Journal
    • Using them as coasters
    • DRM
    • Leaving them on the dashboard of your car
    • Contact with corrosives (orange juice, Bill O'Reilly, etc.)
    • Using them as shuriken

  • Use intelligent distributed databases (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Arthur B. ( 806360 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:27PM (#14436539)
    The best way to preserve data, imho is storage independent. Suppose you want to archive your family photos. Sure you can put them on a hard drive... then you can use raid, hard drive will be replaced regulary and the probability of a simultaneous failure being low you dramatically increase the lifespan of your storage. The same could be done on the internet with a P2P network dedicated to long term storage. You divide your files into chuncks and calculate a hash. Peers download it and keep it on their machines. You just have to keep signatures of your chuncks, you can do that on highly reliable mediums, like grave it into stone if you wish. The P2P network automatically polls for chunks and ensure redundancy by pushing rare pieces to clients. To ensure collaboration, you can upload only a fraction of what you host. Some sort of bittorrent expect it's rather a bitpool.
    • > Peers download it and keep it on their machines.

      No , they don't. Not unless they really want it.

      > The P2P network automatically polls for chunks and ensure redundancy by
      > pushing rare pieces to clients.

      Like UseNet?

      > Some sort of bittorrent expect it's rather a bitpool.

      Good one! You realize that Bram was working on just such a distributed file store before he decided it was a rat-hole and quit? Then a bit later he wrote BitTorrent.
  • Gerecke recommends magnetic tapes to store pictures, videos and songs.

    Because, as anyone who's ever dealt with a cassette tape or a floppy disk knows, magnetic media never goes bad...

    -JDF
  • ...just because they claim to have invented magtape and have a big stake in the market. [ibm.com]

  • Photography's loss (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:27PM (#14436550) Journal
    I've mulled this occasionally, but I suspect the late 20th century and early 21st century will become a mini-dark ages (at least for personal or family things).

    The reasons for this:
    1. depressingly high failure rate of hard disks
    2. lack of long term storage media
    3. obsolete formats

    As for tape, DLTtape (invented for the venerable VAX) is supposed to be able to last 25 years in good condition. How many people buy DLTtape drives? They aren't cheap and the tapes are not cheap. They are about the only thing with the capacity to store all your photos and video on one cartridge.

    Digital photos and video seem like great things (and are: I'd hate to have to edit my videos the old fashioned way) but there is a sting in the tail that most people won't expect. If I want to look at a photograph my Dad took in 1972, I just pull it out the draw and look at it. No maintenance has had to be done on that photograph - it's just been stored in a cool, dry, dark place.

    Digital data on the other hand needs periodic maintenance. If a format you've used becomes obsolete, you have to go through and update your entire library. You have to periodically back it up. You have to periodically cut it to media like CD. How much family history have people lost already due to dead hard disks, and not realising the need to continuously back up and format shift? Even if a DLTtape cartridge is still intact and readable in 75 years time, will there be anything to read it? Will JPEG decoders come with everyone's device to view photos?

    • Re:Photography's loss (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jridley ( 9305 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:57PM (#14436962)
      1. depressingly high failure rate of hard disks

      I find hard discs insanely more reliable than they used to be. I was building PCs in the 80's and I experienced the wonder of buying a full 20-count box of Seagate hard discs, and have EVERY DAMN ONE OF THEM FAIL IN 3 MONTHS.

      I currently have 8 Maxtors and Hitachis of between 160 and 250 GB spinning in 3 machines at home. Most are > 2 years old. No problems. My older 40 and 80 GB machines have been given to friends to use in their older machines. They haven't had any failures either. I can't remember the last time I had a hard drive fail.

      If your case is such that your hard drives are hot to the touch, don't blame the drive for failing. I think that's what causes most of the failures.

    • Re:Photography's loss (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kabocox ( 199019 )
      How much family history have people lost already due to dead hard disks, and not realising the need to continuously back up and format shift? Even if a DLTtape cartridge is still intact and readable in 75 years time, will there be anything to read it? Will JPEG decoders come with everyone's device to view photos?

      I'll play it right back to you, How much family history was lost because only grandmama had the only copy of the pictures and there wasn't any way to easily copy them? Do you have "a" family photo a

      • Re:Photography's loss (Score:3, Interesting)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )

        I'll agree that the .jpg format may be replaced at somepoint, but how long would it take an automated tool to batch convert a few million .jpgs?

        And I will disagree. Worrying about jpeg disappearing is no different than saying "don't waste your time writing in English, it'll go obsolete and humankind won't understand it anyways." There are billions of jpegs out there, and unlike human language, they are documented unambiguously and in source code. And JPEG is used globally, unlike risky region-specific

    • I suspect the late 20th century and early 21st century will become a mini-dark ages (at least for personal or family things).

      LOL

      Get outside of your technology world for a few minutes and look at the HUGE boom in a multi-million dollar trend called "scrap-booking."

  • Old and incorrect news (Score:3, Interesting)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:29PM (#14436565)
    Not only have the early deaths of CD-Rs been greatly exaggerated before, but even the lifespan of pressed CDs were (are?) hotly disputed. In the early 80's I heard all about how CDs would last forever because each play didn't degrade the quality ever so slightly like it did with cassette tapes and vinyl records. Then in the late 80's a group of researchers determined that CDs would probably only last ten years, for whatever reason.

    I got my first CD-RW drive when it was a $700 2x model well over ten years ago. The first things I burned were a bootleg Tragically Hip CD and a few rented Playstation games. I still play that Hip CD and recently I dugg out my Playstation collection to use with the epsxe emulator and they all still work great, though I can't remember which of my burned games were copied when.

    I have had a few CDs and DVDs go bad, but they've always been really cheap media. Even cheap CD-Rs have been ok, but I have noticed that cheap DVD-Rs can be very poor quality and sometimes the data won't last through the night. These are usually identifiable because at least half the time the data will be corrupt straight out of the burner. You don't have to spend a lot to get good media, just don't get the cheapest media you can find.
  • How many people find they need data after 6 months? Even with businesses, it seems that most of my customers (a lot of engineers and high-rise building contractors) seem to prefer paper form over digital, for archival purposes.

    For data I really NEED for more than 6 months, I find off-site archival the best solution. First, that's their job. Second, they're cheap and they expand my data storage size as needed. Third, they're insured.

    If someone tells me they "need" to save something forever, I point them
  • I have several CD-ROMs that I created over 10 years ago using Kodak Ultima CD-Rs and I can still read them in my PC and Mac. The Ultimas were the best CD-Rs, IMHO, that were ever made. It's a shame that Kodak no longer produces this high-quality line of CD-Rs. I certainly would willingly pay a premium price for these if I could find them or CD-Rs of the same quality.
  • Seems that with all the recent cost cutting CD-R manufacturers have been using cheaper materials lately. I have CD-Rs that are like 10 years old and still running strong. However, I have some CD-Rs that I have purchased within the last few months and they are already going bad.

    http://www.tradealyst.com/ [tradealyst.com]

    • Buy OEM (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jridley ( 9305 )
      Don't buy name brand media. They're just rebranding, and they can switch suppliers on you.

      Go right to the asian source, buy from a reputable importer. I use supermediastore.com, and I buy nothing but Taiyo Yuiden media.

      The place where I work has a high-speed multispindle CD-R duplication station, and goes through CD-Rs by the thousands per month. I asked a while ago and they have tried everything, and now use NOTHING but Taiyo Yuiden media also. If they have a failure, we have to ship a replacement over
  • Just wondering what effect burn speed has on the whole thing. I mean, there are obviously a lot of people here talking about how their CDs burned in 95-98 still work fine. Burn speeds at the time were limited to 2x-4x. Meanwhile, there are lots of stories about CDs burned in the last few years that have failed. These are generally burned at 24-40x. Any chance that it's not so much a factor of the media (though it will obviously play some role), but more a factor of the burn speed?
  • I think businesses here and there are starting to realize that the digital era creates a ton of data that needs archiving.

    People continue to buy music, take pictures, capture videos, buy music etc.. but less and less of it comes on a physical support.

    People tend to "rat pack" everything on their computers. The problem is computers are inherently unsecure and reliable. Even top geeks tend to forget to back up their material.
    Today we learn that indeed a DVD-R or CD-R is no good.

    I have already started uploadin
  • They were burned at 2x via an iomagic 2x burner that cost 300 at the time. However I do have CD's with no names that are much younger and haven't lasted. They also just happen to be audio CD's. Any idea on DVD+r's? I'm just getting into burning the family vids on them how long can I expect them to last. I'm planning on keeping ISO images on an offline drive for backup.

  • after 5 years (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptnMArk ( 9003 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:32PM (#14436626)
    I just recently tested ~120 cds from about 1999-2002.

    Attempting to read them with a DVD drive failed many discs.

    But reading with a CD drive I was able to read all of them (after some cleaning) except two (most files were readable) that were scratched.

    It seem there is some difference between DVD and CD drives.

    Most CDs were burned with 2-8x speed, I almost never use >16x today.
  • Tape is a pain in the ass. Just make copies of your discs every few years, or whenever the technology changes (CDR to DVDR, DVDR to HDVDR, HDVDR to the holographic crystals from Superman, etc)

  • Tapes, yes, but... (Score:3, Funny)

    by the_rajah ( 749499 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:35PM (#14436665) Homepage
    The concern I have is whether I had a working drive to read the tapes with in 40 years.. Oh, nevermind, I'm 60 now, so that probably won't be a problem for me personally..
  • For most personal users one DVD will fit everything they need. If they have a big photo collection maybe re-burn all DVDs yearly.

    I used to backup to CDROM. Now I back up to DVD. I'm sure something else will come out in the future.

  • Instead of tape why not drives for long term? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by portwojc ( 201398 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:36PM (#14436679) Homepage
    Isn't the cost point close enough yet to just use hard drives instead for long term storage and not be too bad?

    You can pick up OEM 250GB hard drives for around $100. Toss in a $50 USB case or a SATA case and you're looking at $1.67 a GB storage. Plus you're not limited to 4.5GB file size.

    Sure drives fail but you won't be spinning them that often. I'm begining to think it may be worth it for the long term. Then use the USB drive or SATA as needed and if need be burn a disk.
    • Experience with other mechanical objects stands up and asks a question.

      Will the lubricant in the bearings go sticky if the drive is on a shelf and never spun up? Someone out there must have direct knowledge.

      The issue is that most (most complicated, powered) machines with moving parts need occasional mild exercise.

    • Re:Instead of tape why not drives for long term? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by flaming-opus ( 8186 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @02:09PM (#14437728)
      Absolutely.
      Disk drive are cheap, fast, and relatively durable.

      I work in the data archive field, and we don't see optical jukeboxes anymore. I think HP still makes one, but everyone else is out of that market. The preferred method is high-speed tape, but there's an entry cost for a low end changer (about $10,000) that makes it prohibitive for desktop users. second disks are a fantastic way to back up data, and you're seeing that even in the enterprise space. IT can't compete with tape in GB/$, or in some of the archival automation, but it's getting close.

      The important thing with disk, just as it is with tape and with optical, is to make AT LEAST 2 backups, and to store them in a different place. I don't know how many data centers I've walked into where the tape library is sitting in the same rack as the raid, and they don't use the vaulting features. Yeah, you're protected against a disk failing, except if the failure is in a fire, or a flood.

      If you care about your data, get a three drives, a safety deposite box, and a firebox.
    • Isn't the cost point close enough yet to just use hard drives instead for long term storage and not be too bad?

      You can pick up OEM 250GB hard drives for around $100. Toss in a $50 USB case or a SATA case and you're looking at $1.67 a GB storage. Plus you're not limited to 4.5GB file size.

      Fuji dvd-5 -r Prinables at newegg are $22 per 50 or 44cents each. That's under 10cents/gig for 235gigs. That's a factor of 16 difference. That's not a small number, that's a big number.

      If talking DVD-9 8.5gigs well, tho

  • NIST Study (Score:4, Informative)

    by goosman ( 145634 ) * on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @12:38PM (#14436713)
    http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/gipwog/StabilityStu dy.pdf [nist.gov]

    NIST Did a study that shows up to 30+ years of longevity that is totally dependant on handling and storage.

  • I Archive a lot on DVD/CD, not worried. (Score:3, Informative)

    by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Tuesday January 10, 2006 @01:37PM (#14437410)
    I have never had a failure on one of my archive disks going back to 1997. But I keep these in individual cases stored vertically etc...

    Stuff that is not replacable (my personal photos) I burn on two different disk types. I always use high quality disks. Using Fuji TY dvd R+ right now. I believe DVD R disks are a bit more rugged than CD R.

    My car disks live in my car in Ottawa Canada. Brutal humid hot summers, I have a set of CD-r in a visor holder. Most of these disks have been in the car for 5 straight years. When I park a disk in my player it often stays for a week at a time. My CD player ejects disks so hot you don't want to touch them. Here I have a few skippers, but each one that skips is also skratched to pieces. Either way. 5 years of torture and most are still fine. I don't think any skip that are not scratched up.

    I feel pretty secure about my well cared for indoor disks lasting ten years. Though I will start moving my CD-R backups to DVD.

    In ten years, terrabyte storage should be common and cheap.

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