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[A.B. Dada]

I found the article, folks:

http://computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,1080 1,107607,00.html

January 10, 2006: Although 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 GmbH, takes this 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.

This is completely in step with what I've found with almost every CD I have burned.  I'm actually in the process of addressing long term storage issues for a studio I'm planning on opening this year.  I'll post when I have more news on better media formats or even possibly better CD-R companies.

What do most of you need to save for more than 2 years?

[Ron Riedel]

The other issue is continued software/hardware compatibility with the chosen medium. For example, today, even if you had perfectly good 5 1/4 inch floppies containing important data, it would be hard to find a system to read it back on. Even worse would be companies who have historical data archived on 1 inch 9600 bpi IBM mag tapes. Who anymore even knows how to operate such a tape drive? Here at Agilent, we have tons of firmware and design data archived on tapes and discs in proprietary formats that we no longer have working systems to read, or people knowledgeable of how to operate those old systems. The media may be good, but the data is still irretrievable.

I guess what I'm saying is that, if your archives are important to you, you almost need to update them to current media every 5 years or so anyway, while you still have a system that's capable of reading the old media.

Ron

[Andy Peters]

A.B. Dada wrote on Tue, 24 January 2006 08:39

What do most of you need to save for more than 2 years?

Buy lots of big inexpensive hard disks, and as bigger disks become available, swap them in.

-a

[Guest]

So what works for labeling?  A stick on label is a potential disaster, if it works a bit loose  (especially in a car! not a pretty sight, and forget about warranty coverage... )

[Marvin]

AB,

I would be interested in your source.  When we discussed recording services on CD a woman brought up the topic of longevity and that she had recently heard that CD-R's don't last. That was the first I had heard of the problem.

Even on this forum, yours was the first response to my question that agreed with her report.

It is important to me, since we have archived our cassette tapes in our library over the years.

Let me know if you can find the source.

Thanks,
Marvin

[A.B. Dada]

Marvin!

Scroll up a few posts, I posted a link from ComputerWorld that lists their source for the 2-5 year estimate.

My real life situations have shown me 5 years is pushing it for CD-R.

[Dave Mallon]

We back up all of our talks onto hard disk and CD.

Once a hard drive is full, we pull it and keep it in the secure cabinet in the office.  We also keep copies on CD-R.

Both could fail, but at least we can say that we tried.

Dave M

[ProSoundWeb Community]