Slashdot Mirror
Burned CDs Last 5 years Max -- Use Tape?
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."
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.
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.
Great. I lose hundreds of precious photos. They give me a buck.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
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.
Another comment:
This is a quote from the story: "His recommendation: a hard-drive disk with 7,200 revolutions per minute." That's a way to have secure storage?
That's a recommendation? It's quite obvious that the author of the referenced story, John Blau, has no technical knowledge.
Another quote: "Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland GmbH, takes this view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime."
I suppose that article was written by a public relations person and was published because someone was paid. Magnetic tapes are NOT reliable, in my experience.