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Storage: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life?
- 2/13/09 2:55 PM
Optical Media Shelf Life
by GerryWilson - 1/31/09 11:34 AM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This is a topic of great interest but not many clear studies. The life expectancy of CD-R, DVD-R and DVD+R types of media can be estimated to be as little as 3 years and as great as 200. As the referenced studies noted later report, it depends on the quality of the media, the quality of the writing method, and the care and handling on the shelf after the media is written. A quick summary is that you need to buy good media, verify after writing, and keep the media in a temperature and humidity controlled place away from direct light. So, don't keep it in warm and/or damp places, don't keep it under bright lights or sunlight, and don't let it get warped or flexed. My own experience is that with some care, media should have a high likelihood of lasting 10 to 2 years or more.
For more discussion see NIST publication "Stability Comparison of Recordable Optical Discs - A Study of Error Rates in Harsh Conditions" (pub # 150481) or "How Long Can You Store CDs and DVDs and Use Them Again?" at (http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html) or do some Google searches.
Gerald Wilson, OmniSoft, Inc.
Do flash drives fall in this category? Hard disc USB drives?
by snidely9447 - 2/13/09 5:51 PM In reply to: Optical Media Shelf Life by GerryWilsonWould either of the above work better for storage than DVD-R? I have 20 years of home video. 100-200G.
Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life?
by ewis77 - 1/31/09 12:47 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
YES!
Factory discs are manufactured with metal and covered with an optically clear very sturdy plastic. The metal is totally encased in the plastic so you cannot damage all of the little dots and dashes embedded in the metal. If kept scratch free they could last, well much longer than any of us. But, recordable discs have the metal coated on the back side of them unprotected. By use of a laser the information is written to the disc via a chemical process. If the metal gets scratched all of the information in the scratch could be lost. Also, the chemicals embedded between the plastic and metal will over time corrupt the path the laser uses to read the disc. So, bits and pieces of data will be lost over time (4 to 10 years) and it will progressively get worse. DVD's are more susceptible to this than CD's.
Who says?
by wsulek - 1/31/09 12:54 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I read the first 15 responses here and none of them cite a source of information. "I read this" and "I heard that" are not reliable sources. The Council on Library and Information Sources can be a good place to start: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html
Magnetic tape?
by eastereggnog - 1/31/09 12:57 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I remember shopping for DVD or CD's and looking on the case. It said that they should last 100 years. Blu-ray disks are more resistant to scratches than DVD's and CD's because of a coating that is put on the data side. So BD's I would think are even better. There are a few blu-ray burners available. The article your friend may have read is from PCworld.com. Where Kurt Gereke said that magnetic tape has 30 to 100 years lifespan and CD's and DVD's have a few years.
CShelf life of CD's and DVD's
by r61 - 1/31/09 1:33 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The onlt recognized archival storage material that is recognised is black-and-white film. It is good for at least 100 years. Any other form of starage degrades over time. CD's and DVD's have a reference aluminum layer in them that oxidizes over time. When this happens, the thing is no longer readable.
If you live in Belize, there are bacteria that eat the material in CD's causing them to delaminate. I assume the DVD's have the same material in them.
Burned CD's and DVD's
by shadtek - 1/31/09 1:43 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes, burned media does have a shelf life. Some are better than others, and some brands will last longer than others. I have had some last up to 10 years, while others don't last but a couple years. Also remember that CD's are burned with light, do not store burned media in the sunlight-It can make some CD's develop problems and it does not take long for it to happen.
CD's are great but for the same money it takes to buy a 50 pack of dvd's you can go get a thumbdrive. I saw an 8 gig at walmart for less than 40 bucks.
Not long ago it became possible to have no need for a floppy drive at all-Soon this will happen with CD's. Technically it can be done already. I will go so far as to predict that soon you will be able to purchase software on some sort of thumbdrive instead of cd's.
Cd shelf life? How long is a peice of string?!
by markandcheryl - 1/31/09 2:23 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I think it all depends on the quality of the original recording as well as the media it was burned to.
For example, a music disc burned 10 years ago isn't going to sound as good as one burned today making play back sound like cd degredation.
I have cds burned in 1998/99 that are as good now as they were back then but a few later discs which skips and jumps because they were not recorded slow enough.
Back in the mid 1990s there was a hoo-ha about cds released that within months were going brown around the edges. We were told not to worry and keep them in the freezer as it would improve the quality of the music as well as preserve the discs from 'oxidizing' (I believe that was the reason given for it)
Well I would like to think that in the intervening years cd technology has come a long way, and despite the use and throw away society that we are now in, most cds if recorded properly will last a lot longer than their predasesors.
Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life?
by dagregg - 1/31/09 2:43 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I recently had a burned brand-name cd of music that was probably a couple of years old, and spent some time stored in the car. A
Post-it note, which does not have a strong adhesive, got attached to the label side. When I pulled it off, it took the face and silver coating off with it, leaving only the clear plastic. I guess that implies the discs do deteriorate, although the temperature extremes in the car probably sped things up.
Stamped vs burned!
by vattan2005 - 1/31/09 3:14 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Of course, DVD's and CD's do have a shelf life depending on the quality. I have had perfectly working CD's fail one me one fine morning!
There is not much you can do about them failing.
Commercial CD's are pressed vs. our burned. Pressed CD's have at least 25 years shelf life because my first pressed CD's are from 1983. Pressed CD's also play on most players without problems. See this for a very learned opinion:
http://www.modern-radio.com/board/t.php?id=42466&r=23
Here is a post from this very forum from 2006:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=152618&messageID=1706897
I am always impressed with stamped CD's and DVD's. They beat the heck out of the burned ones.
Shelf life of CDs and DVDs
by dbaechtel - 1/31/09 3:16 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have heard that CDs have a shelf life of about 10 years. The plastic pits that make up the data is very small ( less tahn 1/4 wavelength of light). The plastic, that is actually a super liquid, slowly migrates over time. After enough time the data is not readible. Of course storage temperatures would significantly affect the plastic migration rate.
Assuming that the hugher the data density means the pits are smaller, that would mean that the shelf life would be shorter on the average. Therefore one would expect the average life of DVDs to be less than 10 years.
FINE TO BE PARANOID
by bossewitch - 1/31/09 5:32 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
it's fine to be paranoid about not being able to read the media after a certain amount of time or use. this was said about diskettes, vcr tapes, etc.
if you really want to be paranoid, you have to think of more than not being able to read the media. imagine what would happen if you lost all of these cd's in one of many ways; e.g. fire, theft, flood. sure, you need backup. i advise my clients to keep onsite and offsite backup. onsite backup as welll as offsite should be kept in a fireproof, waterproof safe.
(personally i never had the discipline to do it!)
akiva in ny
Archival quality of writable optical disks.
by lsacks - 1/31/09 7:31 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Yes, writable optical disks do have a limited life, though there is no independent certification available. It appears that some media may only last 2 or 3 years, though most appear to be good for at least 15 years. There's no way to really know. Rewritable disks don't last as long as "write once" disks, and DVD media don't last as long as CD media. Some believe that DL and blue-ray are "worse", though nobody really knows. The worst thing one can ever do is BEND a disk. Adhesive labels and some kinds of marking pens aren't good, and of course heat, humidity, and scratches on either side are bad. I have had back-up disks become unreadable after 4 years, though that was quite a while ago. A number of brands offer more expensive "archival quality" disks. Some are advertised or guaranteed for 50, 75, or 100 years, though nobody really knows. There are a number of different materials and colors that are claimed to last much longer than the "cheap" ones. A gold reflective layer seems to be widely accepted for this purpose, though they're among the most expensive. Accelerated aging techniques for testing aren't known to reliably mimic age, and testing a disk can still take 2 years. Whatever technology is being tested is likely to be obsolete in 2 years. Check out this website:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/opticalmedialongevity.html
Archiving On CD/DVD
by me2best - 1/31/09 7:50 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have been researching a conclusive answer to this question for a while now. It seems that the key factor regarding whether or not your data burned to disc will survive depends a great deal on the manufacturing of the disc, in particular if the disc has a complete seal along the edge where the two parts form the "sandwich" that encloses the recording media. If the seal is not perfect, oxidation may occur that may render the recorded data unreadable. There are manufacturers producing "Hundred year" disc that are designed to last for many years. I believe the recording media utilized is a high percentage of gold. One of the companies is e-film, I have some of their archival DVDs that I plan to use to backup my photographic imagery. I have seen the Blu-ray disc now, once they are available in the "gold standard" I will use those instead since 25 gigs of info. will fit on each disc. The issue of archiving has not fully been addressed as urgently as I feel it should be, I have images on slides that I shot back in the seventies that look as good now as it did when I shoot it back then. I hope that I am avble to do the same with my digital imagery in years to come. If this issue isn't fully resolved, we face a future crisis in terms of historical archives stored electronically world wide. A bigger and more pressing concern is whether the software in the future will still be able to read data created thirty or more years earlier. I am VERY concerned about our digital futre.
It matters how you handle them
by dmdm - 1/31/09 9:08 PM In reply to: Do burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Every form of media has a shelf life according to how you treat them. For example heat & humidity are both enemies of burned CD's & DVD's. Also you want to store them vertically. Don't lay them on top of each other, they can warp. You'll want to keep your CD's & DVD's in a cool dry place where the sun will never shine on them. Also out of experience, I highly suggest that when you are done burning a disk, take it out, put it back in and make sure it works. Because I have had several disks that did not work after I burned them. So when I needed them I had junk disks and ended up losing irreplaceable photos and music. I have also heard many people recommend that you re-burn your disks every 5 years just to be sure. Good luck!
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