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Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

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Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#151

Post by nekoashide »

RalfWausE wrote: post #89

After reviving a PC i had in the late 90s a couple of weeks ago i investigated this big box of CD-Rs standing besides it (in an unisolated attic in germany... so temperatures from about -5 °C to >35 °C), most of the CDs were burnt in a period from around '96 - 2005, many ... ehm... "off site backups" of games and other software but also personal files. What can i say... every CD i put in the drive worked flawlessly.…

Quality can vary a lot, back in the late 90's you had certain brands and disc you would buy because of how much extra data you could write to them and also testing to see which disc performed better at higher writing speeds. It was a big deal to some folks back then and you likely bought the high quality ones.

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#152

Post by magic_hamster »

bitL wrote: post #122
squarefoot wrote: post #6

I've stopped using burned CDs and DVDs like 15 years ago, long before they were considered obsolete, after losing a huge amount of data, including multiple backups of projects. All of them were kept in their own case on a wall CD/DVD holder, no weights, no humidity, no excessive heat or any sun exposition. After only about 5 years like 30% of them were unreadable at all and others developed errors, so as soon as I re…

100GB M-DISCs are still pretty decent archival means. All photos/videos I've ever generated are roughly 1.2TB so that's 12 of those M-Discs.

Those are BD-R. According to the linked research, those will last 5-10 years, or up to 20 years if you're using a gold metal plate. Either way, they're not close to top performers that last 50 to 100 years and more.

I'd suggest creating multiple backups, including additional mediums such as hard drives and cloud storage (something like S3 Glacier Deep Archive could be relevant), and refresh the media periodically.

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#154

Post by Thrymr »

OptionX wrote: post #20

What would one use as a media for long-long-term storage, taking only into account the resisiliance of the ability to read the data from it? For example if you wanted to store data in a time capsule for like 100 or 200 and you where ganrateed the people on the other side had a reader capable of reading whatever media, and whatever format you chose.

The Long Now Foundation chose analog etched metal for a Very Long-Term backup [0]. Although their time scale is more link 10,000 years, much longer than you are thinking.

[0] https://longnow.org/ideas/02008/08/20/very-long-term-backup/

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#155

Post by thakoppno »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #142
danielheath wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A desktop CNC engraver can be had for $500. Stones are cheap. Archaeologists have read engraved stones after thousands of years of neglect!

You jest, but here's an idea: print a block of raised letters (like old typesetting) on a 3D resin printer (mirror the characters). Roll a thin slab of potter's clay, say 5"x 8". Press the text against the blank slab, fire the clay in a kiln, and voilà , your bio or other precious document will last like Babylonian clay tablets.

I might have to try this with my RSA public key.

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#156

Post by bitL »

magic_hamster wrote: post #152
bitL wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100GB M-DISCs are still pretty decent archival means. All photos/videos I've ever generated are roughly 1.2TB so that's 12 of those M-Discs.

Those are BD-R. According to the linked research, those will last 5-10 years, or up to 20 years if you're using a gold metal plate. Either way, they're not close to top performers that last 50 to 100 years and more. I'd suggest creating multiple backups, including additional mediums such as hard drives and cloud storage (something like S3 Glacier Deep Archive could be relevant), and refresh the media periodically.

M-Disc are supposed to last 100-1000 years. They literally engrave data into an inorganic layer with high melting point instead of writing to a dye.

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#157

Post by mjhagen »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #153

I have binders full of cheap Staples CD-Rs from the early 2000s that literally flaked and peeled. I also have Sony CD-R discs in the exact same binders from the same time period. The Sony discs are fine.

I have a couple of those flaked/peeled disks, those are gone beyond hope, right?

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#158

Post by at_a_remove »

I am surprised that we're still stuck at Blu-Ray levels of data storage on disc. I would have thought we would be up to a terabyte or so by now, but everything has stagnated.

Tape remains expensive for the home data hoarder, and there is a point at which cloud storage becomes more expensive than tape.

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#159

Post by b112 »

cronix wrote: post #148
gorbachev wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got rid of all my CD-Rs I'd use for archiving back in the day. Moved everything to a NAS and dumped CDs. The earliest CDs I had were from 1994 or so, though most were from early 2000s. They were mostly cheapest CD-Rs you could buy back then, so I was expecting most of them be completely unusable. But most of them still read perfectly. I had maybe half a dozen (out of hundreds) that were completely unreadab…

My earliest ones still read. My later ones mostly don't. I'm guessing the difference is the earlier ones were recorded at 2x speed (fastest that existed) while the later ones were recorded much faster (probably 8x or 12x), which means less laser burn in time? Really not sure. Either that or the yamaha drive was just much better than the later model plextor.

Yamaha... anyone that makes both snowmobiles and guitars, is cool enough to make my cd writer.

(And bizarrely, they did seem to make excellent ones)

Re: Longevity of Recordable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays (2020)

#160

Post by Test0129 »

ridgered4 wrote: post #135
Test0129 wrote: post #32

After quite a bit of research into this about a year back I decided to archive everything on archive-grade CD-Rs. 20-50 years is more than enough and realistically in the correct climate (a safe or something that humidity would have trouble getting into along with dessicants, etc) could last much longer. I evaluated magnetic tape, HDDs, and a few other options are CD-Rs are as good as magnetic tape (in longevity) and…

Is there a reason you didn't go with M-disc?

Honestly never came across it in my research. I used music producers and professional archivists as my leaping off point and for them TY and CMC Pro seemed to be the bread and butter. I'll take a look at these though!
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