Shelf life of CDs / DVDs

[rsvmilly]

We all know that in theory CDs are the way of the future and that you can smear jam on them and they will still work! In practice, the dyes fail over long periods, leaving them unreadable.

Does anybody know the shelf life of writeable CDs or DVDs?

What about products which are better than others?

[Plotloss]

Good ones guarantee a shelf life of 100 years +

[zumbruk]

Plotloss said:

Good ones guarantee a shelf life of 100 years +

This being a guess, since there are no 100 y/o CDs.

[scared but happy]

Is that shop purchased ones or home burned versions?
added: and do DVD-R or DVD-RW's make any difference?
I know its down to the sub{summit} dye.

>> Edited by scared but happy on Tuesday 25th October 15:16

[Plotloss]

zumbruk said:

Plotloss said: Good ones guarantee a shelf life of 100 years + This being a guess, since there are no 100 y/o CDs.

Granted

I dont really see what can go that wrong though.

Reminds me of sending an apprentice to 'defurgle' mag tapes. Furgling is the process of the magnetic data falling to the bottom of the can so they need turning over monthly, you see...

[rsvmilly]

www.rense.com/general52/themythofthe100year.htm

[pdV6]

I've had lots of old CDRs consigned to the coffee mat pile.

Commercial read-only CDs should last a fair while, as ther are physical pits in the recorded layer.

[rsvmilly]

pdV6 said:

Commercial read-only CDs should last a fair while, as ther are physical pits in the recorded layer.

I've heard of the some of the earliest ones failing, though.

I'm basically looking at CDs as long term backups for paper documents, scanned into PDFs.

From what little I've since read it seems gold coloured CDRs are best for long-term storage.

[zumbruk]

Plotloss said:

zumbruk said: Plotloss said: Good ones guarantee a shelf life of 100 years + This being a guess, since there are no 100 y/o CDs. Granted I dont really see what can go that wrong though. Reminds me of sending an apprentice to 'defurgle' mag tapes. Furgling is the process of the magnetic data falling to the bottom of the can so they need turning over monthly, you see...

Interesting example, given that mag tapes suffer from print-through (where the magnetic domains on one turn of the tape get induced onto the next turn), binder degradation (where the binder that holds the oxide onto the backing film fails and the oxide falls off) and the one whose name I forget where the turns of the tape stick to one another and the reel cannot be unwound. The British Sound Archive is full of tapes like this.

They also have LPs that have been stacked so long and so high that they are all stuck together (they're trying to seperate them by immersing them in water, then freezing them - the expanding ice forces them apart. They hope.)

Of course, the longivity of media is irrelevant compared to finding hardware to read it ... When did you last see a 3" floppy drive or a DECtape drive?

[Raify]

I've got a DVD that lasted less than a year. Bought it, played it and put it back in the box.

11 months later the thing is unplayable

[aldi]

You can make them last longer by getting expensive ones, and keeping them in a dark, dry place. Direct sunlight = NO-NO.

You could try googling for CDR lifespan.

HTH

Neil

[r988]

I wouldn't expect more than 5 years from what I've read, and that's beign careful, though I have CDs that old that work well enough, poor quality CDs won't last as long obviously. Generally backups on a few external/spare HDDs and update from CD to DVD as well every couple of years and you should be ok. Not sure about solid state devices but they might be worth a look, they can hold more than CDs these days anyway.

[XM5ER]

Given the ever reducing cost of HDD space I cant see it being a long term problem on a domestic scale.

It does explain why some of my older music CDRs seem to be totally unreliable.

Has anybody else noticed a difference in playability/longevity dependant on the speed at which you burnt the disc?

[aldi]

Yes, I had an old yamaha writer and an old Sony car CD player, and the Sony would only play disks burned at single or double speed in the Yam. Both devices are still trooping allong 6 years later so I assume it wan't just that one of them was knackered...

[Kinky]

I've always understood it to be 8 years (from my early HMV days), but quite happy to be corrected.

K