GUIDE The CD-R archiving FAQ

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Taken straight from Wikipedia:

 

I had burned about 30 Maxell CD-R around 2000-2001 . Kept them in a CD binder. Last year i tried to read them and one out of 3 would have errors.

 

http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/2106/2106article14.htm

 

Nothing will beat LTO tapes, to save some buck you can use HDDs, but always use at least two copies stored in different places.
For CD-Rs - some of discs i burned in 1995 are still perfectly readable, some died in less than a year. DVD-Rs are usually a bit more reliable. Don't have even a single one that was readable after burn and died in a box.

 

What about double-layer DVDs? I had a bunch of them that lost all data on the 2nd layer after a month of storage. I know that they probably won't last as long as normal DVD+/-R discs, but should they ever be this bad?

 

Will Blu-ray Disc last longer?

 

There's a particular model of Memorex 25GB BD-Rs that I was using back in 2010 or so that I have been having a lot of problems with. Stored nicely in a climate controlled room (my room, to be specific), I'm hitting about a 50% failure rate on these discs now. The computer (or blu-ray player) won't even recognize the ones that have failed. I haven't noticed any other specific model/brand (BD-R or BD-RE 25 or 50) failing like this (even newer 'models' of Memorex BD-R 25s are doing fine)... Yet. But it seems no burnable optical media should be considered 'archive' quality. Supposedly 'authoring DVD-Rs' were supposed to have a 100 year life span or some such (they required special burners too, they weren't normal DVD-Rs), I'll have to start checking those to see if any have failed (have a lot from my days as a DVD programmer... )

The Memorex blu-ray discs are blue with light blue writing except for the 'R' of 'BD-R' and the '25GB', which are printed in orange.

A friend of mine that used a lot of these same brand of discs around the same time is reporting the same failure rate...

 

It's interesting that Taiyo Yuden mention drive/disc compatibility, I worked for a company that made very high end rack-mounted burners for recording studio use. We had issues with the original Lite-on CD-RWdrives put in these machines (2 per machine, up to 8 machines linked to allow for many hours of seamless recording). We replaced them with a Sony CD-RW only drive and still found that some media produced results below acceptable error levels. In the end we replaced all the drives with Lite-On DVD-RW drives, which seem to have a better tolerance for different brands of media.

 

Okay, so, what about discs that were not burned at home? Would a official PlayStation One disc last 30+ years if kept in a good environment?

 

I have CD's that are around 30 years old and work fine. They've just stored on a shelf/rack in all sorts of climates as I moved around so not a particularly good environment. I don't see any reason a PS disc wouldn't last as long.