DVD and BD (read-only, such as a DVD or Blu-ray movie) 10 to 20 years
Why are they so bad compared to a disc that was burnt?
Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
101–110 of 204 posts
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was Mitch Hedberg joking about getting a receipt for buying a doughnut.
Mitch Hedberg sounds right but I remember the joke as being about someone handing out paper advertisements on the street. The doughnut joke is a different one I think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo5pjBmNyrE Also, for someone who died going on 2 decades ago, he's really got some staying power; I see kids discovering him and liking him to this day.
He made great jokes exclusively in a format that is usually reserved for bad jokes. He was a genius.
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#103I used to be concerned about optical media longevity. I bought Taiyo-Yuden discs. I checked their integrity. I stored them carefully. But the format became obsolete (for me) long before the media degraded. Recordable discs are just too small for the backup use case I had. Optical drives are still available of course, but they are now rarely standard with a new PC or laptop, and soon will become specialist components,…
Just my photo library is over 1.5 TiB, there just not way to have long-term offline backups of that, you have no choice but to run and maintain a file server and cloud backups
1.5 TiB is not much really. Any mobile HDD will do. I've a whole bunch of them. Oldest were over a decade, no issues at all.
The only issue is that they have to be labeled clearly, or you are going to have a hard time to find whereabouts.
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#104Is anyone using M-disks and what's your experience so far?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
https://web.archive.org/web/20130422110903if_/http://www.mdi...
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with cloud storage is that it's a needy thing. You have to pay for it in periodic payments the whole time it exists. And it's also controlled by someone else. I do really wish there to be a type of storage medium that I could record, store somewhere, and forget about. And then when I need it years later, it would still be perfectly readable. Optical discs are indeed kinda that, but their reliability is hi…
A desktop CNC engraver can be had for $500. Stones are cheap. Archaeologists have read engraved stones after thousands of years of neglect!
And how many did they fail to read?
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#106Since I saw ddrescue mentioned.
I really found Dvdisaster helpful for rescuing DVDs.
The only strange thing is, that somehow the version I can currently install from my package manager appears to be missing functionality that was once available when I installed it from Debian packages a few years ago.
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hard drives" don't necessarily last any longer than a few years either.
This is also true. Having also lost data on two hard drives kept in a drawer for just over a couple years I can totally confirm that, however it was a isolated incident probably also due to some physical issues in the drives, although they weren't old and SMART would report them as 100% healthy. After those two years both drives were completely dead, not just unreadable; ultimately I could bring one to life again aft…
Wondering if you do any checking for bitrot? I mean, if some files on one of your disks became corrupt over time how would you know before it becomes too late to recover it from older backups?
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
But keeping a box of storage media in your closet doesn't cost you anything extra, as opposed to cloud storage.
How expensive is your housing per square foot? I suspect cloud storage is cheaper.
I don't know how common it is to own your living space in the US, but where I'm from, it is fairly common. And I don't think "how expensive per square foot" is applicable when you aren't renting.
But either way, you won't be paying more in rent and/or utilities for having an extra box in your closet.
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#109There was a panic circa 1980 about the longevity of color cinema film. Martin Scorsese pointed out the cultural loss but it was also a big dollar and cents loss because home video was on its way as a way to turn old movies into cash.
People looked at quite a few different answers, including copying the movies and separating them into three films, one for each color, but the problem was simply solved when people discovered you can greatly extend the life of dyes by storing them in the freezer.
You have to keep them out of light also. Conversely, high temperatures accelerate aging. I have a room in my house (an old farmhouse with uncontrolled humidity) which is very bright and somewhat intemperate (and also has a lot of indoor wildlife) and I’ve found prints made with fugitive dyes fade badly in six months — I didn’t get mad instead I use it for accelerated aging tests, I make two prints and store one in the dark and put the other in the wall.
There is a book about this stuff at
Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)
#110Totally anecdotal but just a month ago I opened a box from my last moving (ended 4 years ago...) and I found a CD-RW labeled "Backup 2001", which survived 5-6 relocations, even an international one. Well, I put it into an USB DVD player I have aaaand, it starts spinning and spinning and spinning, and nothing shows up in Nautilus. Looking at dmesg I see a few I/O errors on the device. Then, I try ddrescue [1], start e…
Isn't archiving on a HDD a more robust solution?