life span of cd-r, too short

Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?

Optical discs may not be your best bet for storing digital media long term, expert says.

John Blau, IDG News Service
Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime.

"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke says. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."

The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data "shifting" on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam.

"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a life span of around two years," Gerecke says. "Some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years."

Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, he says, because few vendors use life span as a selling point.

Similar Limitations

Hard-drive disks also have their limitations, according to Gerecke. The problem with hard drives, he says, is not so much the disk itself as it is the disk bearing, which has a positioning function similar to a ball bearing. "If the hard drive uses an inexpensive disk bearing, that bearing will wear out faster than a more expensive one," he says. His recommendation: a hard-drive disk with 7200 revolutions per minute.

To overcome the preservation limitations of burnable CDs, Gerecke suggests using magnetic tapes, which, he claims, can have a life span of 30 years to 100 years, depending on their quality. "Even if magnetic tapes are also subject to degradation, they're still the superior storage media," he says.

But he's quick to point out that no storage medium lasts forever and, consequently, consumers and business alike need to have a migration plan to new storage technologies.

"Companies, in particular, need to be constantly looking at new storage technologies and have an archiving strategy that allows them to automatically migrate to new technologies," he says. "Otherwise, they're going to wind up in a dead-end. And for those sitting on terabytes of crucial data, that could be a colossal problem."

link to article

I am now worried... -fear

 

blu rays disks!!!!!!!!!!! pioneer launching new blu ray burner rom, i think

heard sum sort of disk suspassing the blu ray that holds lots more than a blu ray.......cant remember wot tho, hvd or sumthing

note blu ray holds bout...... hmmmm.......6 or 8 times more than a dvd, cnt remember wot

can n e bdy confirm on this

 

i have way too much media to just store on HD

 

i burnt my starcraft cd 6 years ago and it works fine

 

i dont think its a problem at all, whatever you back up will be out of date in 2-5 years anyways, music is a different matter though.

 

i keep losing mine haha >.<

 

Depends mainly on what brand of CD you use in my opinion.

I've used unbranded (blue dye) CD's and they only lasted 2-3 years - CD was in mint condition aswell.

Kodak claims their CD's can last well over 100 years (composed of gold-fortified silver alloy):
http://wwwuk.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/service/cdrMedia/lifetime.pdf

I've burn't a Kodak CD 8 years ago and still works well. In fact, it's the best brand I've used.

Other trusted brands are Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden.

 

The bad thing about storing on magnetic tape is that data can easily be accidently erased if you place it near a magnetic field, i.e. unshielded speakers. Gotta be very careful.

I think I'll stick with CD's .

 

haha i kicking into dvds, but i guess since they store more i tend to put more stuff in and if it screws up

im screwed -lol

 

Hehe, true. I create two backups if it's important.
I've finally moved from CD's to DVD's now since they're so cheap and my first DVD-RW (NEC ND-4551) should arrive tomorrow. I can't wait

 

hahaha i bet u soon will need sumthing with greater capacity unless u want mountains of CD-Rs hahahaha

 

wow that pretty hardcore, nw u mention that i do hve some bkups on my pen drives and external HD besides my DVDs

i tend to use re-writables more, for sum reason these tend to more error free as sumtimes the DVD-R get errors on the disk when i finish burnin for sum reason -confused

 

By the way, which brand of CD/DVD-R/RW's do you's use?

Be nice to know which worked well and which didn't.

The best brands:
- Kodak (very durable), Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden.
- TDK are very good too (had a bad batch once though)

And the worst:
- Imation (really... really bad quality, stay away from them in my opinion)
- Heard from many people Ritek/Ribrand used to be very good, but now they produce very poor quality CD's and DVD's.
- And anything that's unbranded lol