'Digital Dark Age May Doom Some Data'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 10th Nov 2008 09:13 UTC, submitted by irbis
In the News What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer's hard drive? The concern for archivists and information scientists is that, with ever-shifting platforms and file formats, much of the data we produce today could eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.
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CD's last forever ?
by jokinin on Mon 10th Nov 2008 10:43 UTC
jokinin
Member since:
2005-11-07

I remember when we were told that CD's would last for all our lives, and well, i rescued some of the first CD's i burned 10 years ago, and the had become almost transparent, and obviously, they couldn't be read and i had to throw them away. And i was a bit angry because they contained some music i download via dialup i wanted to listen back ;)
I feel hard disks are much safer, but i don't know if they will last longer than 10 years or so.

Reply Score: 2

RE: CD's last forever ?
by Johann Chua on Mon 10th Nov 2008 12:17 in reply to "CD's last forever ?"
Johann Chua Member since:
2005-07-22

Pressed CDs are supposed to last a hundred years or so, but of course they haven't been around long enough for us to know their actual usable lifespan.

Edited 2008-11-10 12:18 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: CD's last forever ?
by smashIt on Mon 10th Nov 2008 12:35 in reply to "RE: CD's last forever ?"
smashIt Member since:
2005-07-06

Pressed CDs are supposed to last a hundred years or so, but of course they haven't been around long enough for us to know their actual usable lifespan.


you are not up to date on this
now it's known that after 20 years the polycarbonate has degenerated enough (microcracks and so on) that you have to rely on errorcorrection to read a disk in perfect condition
but thats with the large structures in cds
so how long will a dvd last? 10 years?
a bd? 5 years?
we will see...

Reply Parent Score: 4

RE: CD's last forever ?
by hobgoblin on Mon 10th Nov 2008 16:13 in reply to "CD's last forever ?"
hobgoblin Member since:
2005-07-06

the problem i see with hardrives is that if the read heads or control electronics dies, there is just no way to take the plates out, pop them into a new case and power back up.

with a optical disk you do not have any dedicated read hardware. any optical drive that can read the format will do.

now the survivability of the disks themselves, thats a whole different story...

Reply Parent Score: 2