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Burned CDs Last 5 years Max -- Use Tape?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the been-there-before dept.

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."

3 of 664 comments (clear)

  1. 5 years max? by blanktek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have CDs that have lasted 10 years with no errors. Obviously 5 years is not the maximum life. Perhaps the maximum EXPECTED life.

  2. CD-Rs with a 100 year warranty by OverDrive33 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We've known that CD-Rs will degrade for a long time. Hispace have recently launched a new range of CD-Rs aimed at digital photographers. These disks use 24 caret gold to help add stability to the disks. As a result, they come with a 100 year warranty.

    Your porn will be around for decades after all!!

    --
    Find Escorts, Strippers, Massage Parlours, Swingers
  3. Re:I can attest to that... by jridley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have had many problems with DVDs. I've had media that degrade quickly, and also writers that cause discs to degrade quickly. Every disc I wrote in late 2003 is bad. They started going bad after only a few months (in some cases, days).

    I switched both burners and media and now have no problems. However, I still do a 100% verify, and don't totally trust DVD-R. For stuff I *really* want backed up, I put a PAR2 set on the disc, and I burn both DVD and at least one CD copy for offsite.

    BTW I found that some really crappy DVD-ROM drives will read almost anything. All of those hundreds of bad discs that I have? I bought a shitty CompUSA DVD-ROM drive for $35, and it will read them all, even though NO other drive I own will read them (I tried Sony, 2 NEC, 1 Pioneer and 1 Lite-On DVD-R drives, plus Teac, Pioneer DVD-ROM drives). I have NO reasonable theory why this is, but the damn thing just reads anything. I'm glad of it too. I discovered this when I realized that my shitty $40 mintek set-top DVD player would play the discs and "better" players choked, so I decided to try a crappy DVD-ROM drive. So I can now make new copies of the messed-up discs.