Up To 10% of CD-Rs Fail Within a Few Years 317
Whatever you think about the likelihood that a new kind of DVDs could last for 1,000 years, this note from reader crazyeyes should give you pause about expecting current CD-Rs to be reliably readable for decades. TechARP found a failure rate near 10% for CD-Rs recorded 7 to 9 years ago, after storage in ideal conditions. On some, one or more individual files could not be recovered; others were not reliably readable on two separate drives. "In the past, hard disk drives were small (in capacity) and costly. To make up for the lack of affordable storage, many turned to CD-Rs. As it became common to store backups and personal pictures, videos, etc. on CD-Rs, the lifespan of these discs became a concern. According to manufacturers, CD-Rs should last for decades. Some even quoted an upper limit of 120 years based on accelerated aging tests! That sure is a long time, isn't it? But will CD-Rs really last that long?"
Re:According to... (Score:5, Funny)
Well you of course have to use an error correcting code. people who don't do that then blame the manufacturer's got what they deserved. For example, personally I get 120 years out of my CDs by encoding 699Megabytes of errorcorretion. this leaves me with 1 byte of data. but it last 120 years.
Re:doubtful (Score:5, Funny)
I would say take the Rosetta Stone approach.
Good advice. I save three word 97 copies of all my documents. One in English, one in classical Greek, and one in in hieroglyphics.
the best archival medium I've used thus far (Score:3, Funny)
...is the venerable 5.25" floppy disk, circa pre-1985. My Apple // disks from that time are still readable. It takes rather a long time to back up my 1TB WD "Green" HD onto the Apple //GS I have networked to my main machine, but hey, backups are important! :)
Re:doubtful (Score:5, Funny)
I save mine in Arial, Times New Roman and Wingdings.
Is this sufficient?
Punched cards or punched tape (Score:3, Funny)
Punched cards or punched tape using something stronger than ordinary paper is very good for long-term storage. In ideal conditions it can last millennia.
If that's not good enough, non-organic inks on cave walls and cut indentations in stone can last even longer if protected.
OT: "It's been 4 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" WTF? When did /. start limiting you to 1 comment every 4 minutes?
50,000 year retention time (Score:5, Funny)
Re:doubtful (Score:5, Funny)
30 years ago I punched my programs on "archival quality" punch cards. They weren't like regular cardboard cards, they had a higher rag content that would assure they'd retain their shape longer with less chance of bending.
Re:doubtful (Score:3, Funny)
No, you need a copy in Comic Sans as well so that the people who try to decode it in the future have a wide corpus of works with which to compare it.