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The Myth Of The 100-Year CD-Rom
Toshito writes "Are we putting too much faith in the ubiquitous "recordable CD", or CD-R? A lot of manufacturer claims 100 years of shelf life for a CD-R. But in real life, it can be much less. Expect failure after only 5 years... Personnaly I just discovered 6 audio cassettes with the voice of my late grandfather, talking about old times. These tapes are copies of reel to reel recorded in 1971, and they are still in excellent shape.
I was thinking about digitizing everything, do a little noise reduction, and burning this on CD's, for my childrens and great grand-childrens enjoyment, but it seems that old analog tech from the '70 is more reliable than digital. The full story at Rense. Other links about the subject: Practical PC, Mscience, and an excellent reasearch by the Library of Congress (warning! PDF): Study of CD longevity, html version (google):Study html."
The 100 year CD-ROM becomes a 27 million year CD-ROM, and they plan to have their copyrights extended that far.
Store them on a series of floppy diskettes. They have proven to be VERY reliable. ;)
Rename the MP3s of your grandfather's voice to coors_twins_baby_oil.mpg and put it on Kazaa.
Repeat every year with the current cover girls of Maxim, Stuff, or whatever men's mag suits your fancy.
Guarantee you'll never be at a loss for a copy of dear old granddad.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
What happens when the amount time it takes to transfer all the data from one medium to another is longer than the life time of the media on which it currently resides?
Ripping the reflective surface off CDRs is a good way to impress kids with shiny things. The only problem is, they then want to do it.
:-\
While counselor at a computer camp, once I showed a kid how to rip the reflective face off a CDR with some duct tape, and he spread that information to all the kids. Little did they know that the dye underneath is toxic, and like 7 or 8 kids were puking up their lunch later on. I told the boss I had no idea what happened.
Now, you can enjoy your CDs for a long time...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Personnaly I just discovered 6 audio cassettes with the voice of my late grandfather.....I was thinking about digitizing everything, do a little noise reduction, and burning this on CD's, for my childrens and great grand-childrens enjoyment
Go ahead and digitize everything. Then get yourself a couple of accounts at Gmail when it becomes available. Then email the audio to yourself. You will have it forever then.
Of course you will see a lot of google adwords for Geritol and Ben Gay, but nothing is perfect.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Chemtrails, CIA mindcontrol, UFOs, Bigfoot, and now CDRs...
Do I have to wrap my por^H^H data archives in tinfoil now as well?
are there any other good long-term ways to store large amounts of data, other than what I'm already doing? (In my case, huge scans of image files.) I agree. The needs of the really dedicated pron archivist are being overlooked here. How would normal people like it if their significant other became slowly degraded over 10 years and became covered in dints and imperfections?
convert everything to mp3, and send them to your gmail account, they will be kept here forever in multiple redundant copies
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Does Netcraft confirm this?
that's why I bought the Unreal Tournament 2004 Special Punchcard Edition.
a /U T04-PunchCard.gif
http://img53.photobucket.com/albums/v162/Cordat
As long as I keep them in a dark and dry place, it's going to last forever!
So i guess someone was paying attention in Stats class ;)
That does it. I'm converting all my mp3 collection to 8-track tapes. Does anyone know of a good 8-track tape recorder that mounts in a typical tower 5.25" drive bay to make this easy?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies." - Linus Torvalds
Then its good enough for me. Now, where do I buy a reel-to-reel drive to back up all my data?
Thats why I store everything on zip drives.
One Terrabyte actually, for about $1199.
Yes, I can imagine a Beowulf cluster of these...
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... post it on the internet!
2 words: planned obsolence. They (companies) do this for pretty much everything out there now.. Things are just not built to last like they used to be. :(
Wasn't that because the format they recorded it on was quite obscure and they couldn't find a player to read back the data ?
What did they use, 8-Track or Betamax?
I have about 50 CDs that are 10 or more years old? What are these people doing, storing their CDs in Coca Cola?
True, when I was a kid, I used a home-built LEGO turntable with sewing needle and paper cone to play a couple of LPs that belonged to my father. I could listen to the music, but dad was not amused. :-)
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I have this problem also. Are you using the big black CDs with the spiral grooves too?
> Record it to your HDD in an non-lossy format and > store copies of it on various friends' and > family members' computers. Better still, rip it to mp3 and put it up on Kazaa.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
They store all possible data at the same time, and when you need a file it somehow produces the right file.
However, he probably doesn't have enough cats.
There are 10 kinds of people: ones who understand ternary, ones who don't, and ones who think this joke is about binary
Real men write stuff that the rest of the world wants to copy.
Paper can last for thousands of years... this could be a good solution for long-term storage... right?
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
No, the cassette was just changing to reflect the current Jackson.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Yeah, but when my original's die, I just ask my good friend, Dr. Who, to pop back in time and make me another copy of the pristine original.
I say go with Iomega Zip disks, I...
hey, what's that clicking noise?
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
Is that I can still read data from Iomega Zip disks that are 6 years old, yet can't read CD's I burned 6 months ago. For some reason, the perils of magnetic media and Zip drives never came true for me.
What really irks me is that CD-R was sold to the public as a way of _permanently_ archiving data. Once written, it was supposed to be permanent. The non-magnetic, non-rewritable nature of the media was supposed to prevent accidental overwrites and erasures from magnetic fields.
Top Ten reasons to love CD-R/CD-RW:
* - yes, these are the recommendations that came with a 2004 Toshiba laptop regarding making CD's.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Better than that...
Encode your data into the DNA of Cockroaches!
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
what a scary thought...what if the human race is just some alien's way of storing their pr0n collection? talk about life being a joke!
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
Yes, my experience is that those really bad CD-Rs just failed the burning process. :)
but, but, but... what happens when a random chad disappears from your punch card, and suddenly you're childhood Little League victory becomes an ignominous pummeling by a one armed transsexual in a wheelchair?
You think that's something to have a recording from 1971? I've got hours and hours of tape from a group of guys in 1963 through 1967; it doesn't just have their voices but they sing, too! Songs about advice with girls (She Loves Me, I Want to Hold Your Hand, Baby You Can Drive My Car, Hey, Jude), recreational drugs (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry Fields), politics (everything else, basically). And my aged dad, now a granddad himself, has tapes and "LPs" (larger than a CD but with better quality audio; infinite bits, ya know) of dudes from the 1940s and 1950s! Whoo!
Damn kids. 1971 is a benchmark for longevity?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Put your data on punched paper tape and store it in little stainless steel canisters taped shut so they will last really really long. But then you will need to find a paper tape reader in 100 years...