CD's and DVD's - how long do they last?

[UKBob]

Dont they eventually start to peel, and corrupt themselves in time, the R and RW formats within 2-5 years in some cases?

[telecat]

I have CD's from the early eighties and have no problems with them. I do treat them like records however. No fingermarks, I load them carefully and the Meridian 200 allows me to place the disc directly on the spindle. I make sure they are carefully placed back in the holder and take them out carefully. I have some CDR's however that are not as well cared for. They do some weird things when played and are scratched and smudged. One thing that does cause problems are scratches on the spiral of the disc. The laser reads in a spiral from the inside out and the longer this scratch is the less the error-correction can handle it.

[crazylegs]

Here's an article I found a while back on the subject: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/39406

[UKBob]

crazylegs said:

Here's an article I found a while back on the subject: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/39406

The article concludes that there should not be any problems with professionally manufactured CD's. It seems you cant rely on storing all your files for great lengths of time on DVDR's though.