[SHOCKER] CD and DVD Discs May Fail Sooner Than You Think - Comments Page 1

Category: Backup , Hard-Drives



All Comments on: "[SHOCKER] CD and DVD Discs May Fail Sooner Than You Think"

Comment Page: 1 |  2 

Posted by:

Scott
04 Mar 2021

Thanks for the info, Bob. Would using external hard drives or flash drives also make for longer storage times than CD/DVD storage times? Thanks, Scott

Posted by:

WOFTBO
04 Mar 2021

On another item related to storage consideration should be given to the hardware that will interface with the media. 10 years ago almost all computers (windows based laptop or desktop) had either a CD-RW or DVD-RW device as part of the configuration. Now CD-RW & DVD-RW are not available on a standard purchase. How many computers will interface with USB drives 100 years from now?

Posted by:

Ken H
04 Mar 2021

I am always amused when I read these sorts of predictions. I remember when everyone was urged to rewrite their video cassette tapes to DVD because of the VC's short lifespan. I personally have viewed some, though not all VCR tapes that were decades old and had little or no degradation. The main problem seemed to me to be cheap VCR tape. I no longer own a VCR or even a player, but I certainly have music CDs that are decades old and have never found any of them to degrade in the least.

Posted by:

Renaud Olgiati
04 Mar 2021

The conservation institute of the Government of Canada gives much longer lifespans for most of the CDs/DVDs.

https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/conservation-preservation-publications/canadian-conservation-institute-notes/longevity-recordable-cds-dvds.html

Posted by:

bb
04 Mar 2021

No. Just no. Instead of trying to save a *single* copy of something, MAKE A BACKUP OF IT! Yes, I'm shouting. And then backup that. Every few years, transfer to new media and backup that. Store it in multiple places, multiple ways.

There is no reason any more to lose information. Digitize it and make backups.

Posted by:

Brian B
04 Mar 2021

"...neither of those digital copies is likely to survive nearly as long as that 150-year-old original photo has."

Maybe that's the answer Bob. As well as scanning and saving a digital copy, print out a copy of the photo as well and keep the original as the master copy.

Posted by:

Charley
04 Mar 2021

One of my friends has been studying the problem of recovering data in the future. In particular, will you have the hardware and software that can read and interpret your files 25 or more years from now?

Many common file types will probably be readable in the future, for example JPG pictures, MP3 music, etc. But who will have appropriate hardware/software to deal with various obsolete and no longer used file types. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_obsolescence

In addition to archiving (and copying the media periodically as it ages), it is important to convert anything you really care about to a file type that will probably be around.

Posted by:

Bill
04 Mar 2021

I have CDs dating back to the mid 1980s and they are fine. I can't say how long laserdiscs will last as I just gave my entire collection away a few month ago and they all still played just fine as well. The problem isn't so much the medium as it is the devices that can play them as they seem to be in shorter and shorter supply.

Posted by:

Tom
04 Mar 2021

I have dozens of DVDs I have burned in 2004-05 .. only one has failed. I also , have many vhs tapes from the early 80s that still play.

Posted by:

Bart
04 Mar 2021

You have sent out the warning about CD's and DVD's in the past, but it doesn't seem plausible. We have been using CD's for 40 years now, so I would expect to read about lots of problems if they were failing at 5 years. I haven't had any such problem and haven't heard about anyone who has. How does that make sense?

Posted by:

Mike
05 Mar 2021

The first photograph was the human eye that transforms images into memories. Amazing and did not need to be invented or improved on. Oh well eyeglasses, but that is simply changing lens.

Posted by:

Steve Kohn
05 Mar 2021

This is a subject heavy on my mind.

After four years, I'm close to finishing my autobiography, intended for only my family, a long collection of stupid things I hope my descendants will not repeat. The memoir will also include my music mp3 collection, my favorite (always relevant) podcasts, some favorite videos, many hyperlinks, and more, all impossible to save on paper.

My dilemma has been how to distribute the final product, in a way that'll be reasonably ruggedized and have some likelihood of being readable in 20 years (100 better).

I keep waffling back and forth between 100GB M-discs and external HDDs.

If I go with M-discs, I have to provide external USB readers, and worry the hardware will break (high-precision moving parts) or not be readable by Windows "15."

Same problems, really, with external hard drives.

My current best idea is to give up hope of my hardware being readable in 50 or 100 years. Best to just use cheap 1TB HDDs and put a big alert on page 1, maybe a readme.txt on the root drive, a request to whoever's reading to copy the contents of the drive to a modern drive immediately if not sooner.

If enough copies go to nieces and nephews down the years, one copy might survive a century.
I hope.

Any better ideas, please?

Posted by:

Steve Kohn
05 Mar 2021

By the way, what are your thoughts on the long-term viability of PDF?

I'm writing in MS Word. When finished editing, I'll save as FILENAME.PDF.

Thing PDF will still be around in a hundred years?

If not, what should I use?

Posted by:

Donald R Snow
05 Mar 2021

Bob, as I understand it, commercially-made CDs, and maybe commercially-made DVDs, are different from "home-made" ones and the commercially-made ones last a lot longer. Perhaps, if people are judging the life of CDs from their commercially-made ones, that's not a good measure of how long their home-made ones will last. Don Snow

Posted by:

DBA Steve
05 Mar 2021

Here is an passage I've been aware of for 30 years or so:

Long term data should be inscribed on granite and
stored in the Egyptian desert. This is proven technology!

Seriously, what technology that we use today will be available, or usable, in the future? How much music was on 8 track tapes? Can you play it today?

Posted by:

Steve
05 Mar 2021

Yes, I learned cuneiform script just so I can carve my auto biography onto sandstone plaques. These will be buried with my mummified body. That should do it. Now, where did I leave that chisel ?

Posted by:

ohnothimagen
05 Mar 2021

I haven't had a problem with older CD's or DVD's but have found some newer releases have had this problem; a complete set of "Everybody Loves Raymond" has about a third of the episodes no longer play or show as being on the disc.

Posted by:

Larry
05 Mar 2021

These M disks are ~ 0.15/Gb but last 100 years
but SSD's are 0.10/Gb as are large flash drives
If one just stores info on a SSD or flash drive
and does not use it daily it may have a longer
life then the ~7-10 years if use it daily
perhaps may last 20 years?

Posted by:

BaliRob
06 Mar 2021

All of the comments are based upon discs, etc., being of interest in the future. How many of the posters continually think of their forefathers on a daily basis and who will really care what or who that person was for perhaps more than a minute? I estimate that one of the poster's contributions to the future here would take up to a year to read hahaha let alone copy ad infinitum.

The point IS - it is the 'here and now' that matters especially in my part of the world where thousands are jobless and starving and cannot even comtemplate a future.

Sorry to be pesimistic.

Posted by:

Eli Marcus
06 Mar 2021

First of all, thank you for the Reiner/Brooks 200 yr old man reference - I am a big fan, and still have the first and last of those albums on good old analogue vinyl...including the LP where the 200 Year Old Man was just one skit out of a dozen...
I have been hearing these scare stories about CDRs for at least 10-15 years, and have yet to experience a serious problem with any of the normal quality CDRs or DVDR that I have burned in the last 20 or so years. I go through at least 100-200 CDRs a year with mostly music, but also backup data. The only ones that I have had problems reading were on very cheap stationary store CDRs, and they usually could be read on one of my multiple external drives...The question raised here regarding digital formats that are not supported after 5-10 years is a much more pressing concern for me - I saved many hours of audio backups in SHN format years ago, when it was the standard for lossless compression among music "traders", and today it's difficult to find converters that will read those files... I am glad that I transferred my backups from my old Omega ZIP drive (remember those?) to other media long ago... Here's hoping all this research is proven wrong over the coming years...
:-)

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