Your CD and DVD Discs May Fail Sooner Than You Think - Comments Page 1

What is the life expectancy of thumb drives and camera cards?

Now THAT is hilarious! I remember listening to the '2000 year old man' back decades ago when I bought the LP. Nobody is funnier than when Reiner and Brooks got together. EVERYONE should give a listen! Thanks, Bob, for the reminder link.

Because I am so old (not quite as them), I knew who you were referring to in the last link of the story.

Like most US Government studies that's simply not true. Most of my CDs are over 20 years old and some close to 40. They all play just fine. Just sayin.

Mr. Cooley,
If you are referencing commercially made recordings. the CDs/DVDs are created using a metalized film which is not subject to the degradation of a home created CD/DVD using an organic dye.

I would certainly like to know WHY the use of thumb drives would not be a great substitute. I have saved some music on thumb drives and they work well!

I first became aware of M-disc technology a few years ago when I wanted to publish my autobiography (for the grandchildren only), but decided the best solution was to place the bio on a 2TB hard drive, and to give each child and grandchild their own hard drive. Twenty years from now, if one drive stops working, it'll be easy to recreate it from another drive. Another advantage to using a large hard drive is the ability to place so much more on it: all my music, favorite documentaries, humor, podcasts, etc. I submit that M-discs are not the best solution to this problem.

Hubert: Maybe thumb drives would be vulnerable to EMP attack from Russia.

Regarding the CD degradation issue, I have transferred the binary code of all my CD's to X's and O's onto acid free paper and keep it in a fireproof vault.

I just memorized them and stay at home.

Says a lot for punched tape and Hollerith cards!

Barring a very leaky roof, it's a medium that stands up well under normal conditions, and is human-readable, too.

Re: "I'll bet Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner have already gotten theirs." Carl Reiner? Probably not.

Note that one person having CDs/DVDs that are still readable after 20 or more years is ANECDOTE, not DATA.

To Dan: I think he did, because he was part of the Ocean's team, which was very savvy.

Under the categories "just sayin" and "anecdote not data" I can attest to stuff still being readable on the original 3.5 floppies (we have a plug in USB reader), also on the CD's it was transferred to, and the thumb drives, and the HDD that is the final destination (so far). Maybe one media will outlast my needs to see the stuff.

Anyone remember those so cool HUGE cameras that you put the 3.5 floppy into and the picture was stored directly on to them?

Carl Reiner is no longer in the land of the living. He passed away in 2020.

Mel Brooks, however, is still with us at the ripe old age of 96!

Flash Drives: don't count on them. If not 'recharged' i.e. plugged in, those tiny capacitors will lose their charge like a battery not used for many years.

CDs/DVDs IF STORED PROPERLY, and yes, I'm shouting, will last longer than any flash drive. Sit one in the full sun, it'll fade just like ink will.

If you've got old digital stuff to save, MAKE A BACKUP! Copy it to a computer file and MAKE BACKUPS. It's not rocket science people ... MAKE BACKUPS.

To Ken L.-
Much more interesting talking about the '2000 year old man" than DVDs, CDs, thumb drives, hard drives, and floppies!!! And, when you read the Wikipedia page that Bob linked to, you will see that Cary Grant played it for the Queen. If she liked it, they you probably will, too!

I believe that the bulk of stored material (Data), is these days most conveniently, if not most economically, stored on Flash drives (Thumb drives).
Relatively cheap, small & I think quite reliable.
I don't have dependable info on life & read/write frequency; It would have been very useful if Bob could have helped here!
Alternatively can ordinary PC internal hard drives be considered to have favourable characteristics?

In my moderately humble opinion, the best long-term storage solution is the 'cloud'. Microsoft gives you 5GB storage for free with every account you create, and with Google, its 15GB. Cloud storage is redundant, thanks to RAID technology, et-al. It is secured and maintained by expert teams who know much more about Internet security than I do, and my guess is you too. When a cloud drive fails, it can be replaced with no data loss, and it is de-centralized, making it resilient to any EMP attack. If you want to keep your information private, simply put it into an encrypted, password protected 7-zip archive before storing it in the cloud (7-zip is free).

M-Disk technology is interesting, but the disks are very expensive, and computers sold today do not usually have CD/DVD burners, so the only viable solution is to get an external M-Disk capable burner. When compared with using the cloud, that seems like a lot of unnecessary bother/expense to me.

My2Cents,

Ernie

I was inspired by your article to do a Google search for M-discs, which revealed that this format appears to have been discontinued.Worse, since being sold to CMC, Verbatim's M-discs may be no such thing but dye-based discs packaged as M-discs. I personally find that hard to believe because, if it's true, the brand name's owners are committing a massive fraud, but it makes me very wary about placing much faith in any M-disk currently on the market.