CD-R Lifespan - Is It The Label?

sysadmn writes "Slashdot has discussed archival lifespan of CD-R media before. Fred Langa revisits the issue with a new twist: Are glue-on labels causing premature failure? Much more common than rain forest fungus! From Fred's informative LangaList newsletter."

Comments

CDs are out, use hard disks for storage.

[MongooseCN]

Considering how cheap hard drives are now (about $100 for a 150G disk) it's better to buy multiple hard disks to back things up.

I've decided that if I want to back up my important media for my business, I am going to make a storage machine. Basically it will be a low end machine with a fast network connection and a lot of hard disk space. Each night when I want to back things up I'll send all the files over to the backup machine. To be extra safe I would double the drives in the machine and setup a chron job to copy files from one disk to the other and mirror the drives. That way if one physical disk fails, the files are backed up on another. Also, I'd give it a wireless connection and put it on a very well surge protected power strip. That way lightening is less likely to get to it. Yes, call me paranoid, but I've lost so much data due to media failure that I don't take the risk anymore.

Re:Fields tests from Papua New Guinea

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, now I know to stay the fuck away from Third World shitholes where the savages will break into boats and toss shiny things into the water. Thanks for the heads up!

Re:How about normal CDs?

[NonSequor]

Parchment can last longer than that if you take proper care of it. You might need to design a special printer to use it. My suggestion would be to have thousands of monks make copies of your data.

Re:I used to label my cds...

[Motherfucking Shit]

For one thing, humidity causes the clue to come off

As a Southerner, I can assure you that these effects of humidity are generally permanent... The clue will stay off. In fact I suspect that in many specimens, the clue is never there to begin with. Alas I have yet to prove it.

Fortunately, being of the "sunlight? what's that?" geek variety - you know, those of us who keep the A/C at 65 and only go out at night - I'm unaffected :)