CD-Rs - How Long Will They Last?

[JamesDFarrow]

CD-Rs - How long Will They Last?

For all you people who store your pictures on CDs

Here's an interesting article:
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You know those CD-Rs that you've trusted your most precious memories to? They could be little more use than coasters after just two years. Michael Pollitt investigates.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=513486

James

[photosbyvito]

i've mainly used CD-RWs but was thinking of just saving them to CD-Rs.....kinda changed my mind about that one
thanks for posting this....very important to the digital world

[digcamfan]

If good, solid known brand of CD media is used...

and it is stored in a cool, dry, lightfree place then...

The Answer is:

Much longer than the life of this viewer!

[ursa]

the media is more likely to survive than the unit that reads the media.

You're more likely to have CD-R's that are readable, but not have access to a CD-ROM drive due to drivers or better technology in the future. That typically is what has happened.

I junked all my Syquest 230MB diskettes last summer, I didn't have anyway to read the data, nor a five year old version of Notes to do anything with it.

Now how do I hook up a 5.25 floppy to my iMac?

[bradg]

Originally Posted by digcamfan

...lightfree place ...

is there rellay a "light free place", from what i understand, every place has some amount of light

is thats even right?

[photosbyvito]

i think it should be.....direct-sunlight-free space

[Steve K]

On a related topic, Kodak has this to say about Kodak Photo CD's:


"Exceptional data life is one of Kodak's design criteria, determining the choice of all materials used in making Kodak writable CDs, particularly the recording layer. Repeated tests show that 95% of Kodak writable CDs will have a data lifetime of greater than 200 years if stored in the dark at 25°C, 40% relative humidity (RH). Stored in an office or home environment, the lifetime should be 100 years or more."

More here (long link):

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/profe....22.13.6&lc=en

[Shane Schmidt]

A friend of mine trades Dead shows and archives all of his audio (thousands of CDs) on CD-R. The advice that he gave me wasto use CDs that were manufactured in Mexico, the USA, Canada and Japan. From what he told me the CDs manufactured in Taiwan are of lesser quality and come from b and c stock or something to that effect. There was also something about the dye they use that makes them better.

The CDs that he recommended were Kodak Gold. Stay away from generics, I have had bad luck and lost data after a short amount of time. Here is some more helpful information.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/...Dlongevity.php

[JimC]

ursa wrote:

the media is more likely to survive than the unit that reads the media.

You're more likely to have CD-R's that are readable, but not have access to a CD-ROM drive due to drivers or better technology in the future. That typically is what has happened.

I junked all my Syquest 230MB diskettes last summer, I didn't have anyway to read the data, nor a five year old version of Notes to do anything with it.

Now how do I hook up a 5.25 floppy to my iMac?

Yep -- my wife is complaining about it.. But, I make sure I keep older PC's and drives capable of reading my older media. Hopefully, the hardware won't go bad if/when I ever need access to the older stuff that's never been copied to newer machines (although most of it has been copied).

I've still got PC'sranging from anApple II, 8088, 80286,80386, 80486, Pentium I, II that run, although some of the drives have a bit of bearing whine/noise (I fire the more important ones up every once in a while to make sure the bearings haven't frozen in thedrives). I guess I should test some of the older non-hard drive media more often -- just to make sure that I don't have any problems with it (tape drives, floppies, etc.). After all, you never know when you may need an earlyDOSversion boot disk with custom config.sys loaded drivers for a particular hard disk since you changed the cluster size on it. ;-)

Of course, the internal batteries in machines that have them have long ago failed (so I make sure I keep the disk drive parameters written down for olderPC's that need them). For some reason, my battery backed clock/calendar cards quit working many years ago in some of the older PC's, too - even if you replace the battery. I guess they're just poor quality PC's and operating systems (they should have been designed to work in excess of 20 years without such problems). :-)

Interestingly, I was attending a class this week and the instructor had rooms full ofolder PC's. He told the attendees that they need to take at least one PC with them (he was trying to dispose of them). But, I forgot to get one or two when the class ended so I'd have some spares.:sad:

Now, if I could only find some ribbons for those old printers in the garage....

[EOS RT]

"Repeated tests show that 95% of Kodak writable CDs will have a data lifetime of greater than 200 years if stored in the dark at 25°C, 40% relative humidity (RH)... blah blah blah..."

What if I get stuck with some of those which make up the other 5%?!?

No matter how slick the marketing, or how impressive the 'science', the bottom line is that the only test that will prove a "lifetime of greater than 200 years" is a test which endures 200 years. Anything else is a guess.