Storage expert warns of short life span for burned CDs

Storage expert warns of short life span for burned CDs

"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 said in an interview this week. "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."

How many of you have lost data written on CDRW's like I have?

http://computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,107607,00.html

Hey, if your data's vitally important, paper is still the best storage medium to store it on.

I have not had a CD fail from age yet,
and I have some over 3 years old for sure.

I think that maybe some of the cheapo CDs might have this problem,
but in the CDs i have used, I am just not seeing this.

I wouldnt trust them for storage for 10+ years, but then,
what feasable alternative do we have?

Ive had to switch over to DVD, due to capacity,
though I dont think they are much different.

~John

I'm concerned about this as well. I take lots of pics of the Powernoodle progeny and burn them on CDs. Recently got a 200 gig hard external harddrive as a backup, but that is subject to failure as well.

I guess one solution is to tranfer the data to new CDs every X number of years.


Whats this magnetic tape stuff mentioned in the cited article?

FWIW, I have some CDRs that are close to 6 years old and they still work. No problems at all with the data. Back then burning CDs was really touchy. CDR drives weren't as stable as they are now. If you slightly bumped the desk while it was burning a CD, you just made a drink coaster. Today it's not even much of an issue anymore. But I agree, back then it was a good idea to buy good quality blank CDRs. I still try to buy quality ones now. Even though I have been guilty of using the cheapies from time to time. I just don't put anything that important on the cheap ones.

who cares in 5 years there will be disk the same size as cd but will hold 100 gigs

I've got some CDRW's over 5 years old and working fine. on the flip side, I've got several same age dead.

gold back CDRW's seems to hold up better. problems is you don't know which will die. not a good archival material!

I've had movie backups on cheapo DVD-Rs fail within a year. For photo backup, I use an external HDD. This is not foolproof either, as I once dropped a USB drive about one foot to the tile floor, which killed it.

With the rapidly falling pricing on flash media, I am intrigued about it's suitability as an archival media. Does anyone know how long data is supposed to last on a flash drive?

Peter

Yes, it's a big problem, and no, it's not as simple as presented, of course. Libraries and archives are constantly arguing about the problems. Cheap CDRs are usually based on cyanine dye formulas that are pretty much proven to have a huge range of expected useful lifetime based on environment, such as light exposure. Ranging from months to decades. The common alternative for CDRs is the patented pthalocyanine dye from Mitsui, which several studies have indicated is more stable and should last decades and even centuries (should that be useful for digital data!). We use Mitsui for archival CDRs at our university, and spot check our data quality with a Clover Systems error rate analyzer. According to the analyzer, making low error rate CDRs is very uncommon. We have a particular combination of hardware that we found achieves a very good result, and we stick with it.

Pressed CDs are not always so good either. There are many known failure modes including contaminated aluminumization, pinholes, bad coating with edge deterioration, too fast pressing, etc. Many pressed CDs have a higher error rate than a good CDR.

Tape has huge problems, too. The mechanisms are delicate. The chemistry of the tape coatings has many failure modes. It can tangle and break, etc. Pro audio tapes of the 1970s-90s can have a deteroration called "sticky shed" where the binder turns gummy. We have thousands of audio DATs since 1990, and many random playings are turning up random data dropouts from tapes only 5-6 years old.

The whole field is a huge problem for anyone working on keeping information for future generations.

2-5! yikes, I thought it was 10 or so... time to do yearly backups of the backups, then...

The life of burned media is definitely shorter than pressed but it also depends on the type, quality, how its burned and how you store it. CD-RW (as with most RE-writable optical media) will have a shorter lifespan than burn once media. The quality of the media can have a huge impact on longevity. Forget what brand name it is, what matters is where the media is made. Most media is made in common factories in Taiwan. So your Maxell, Sony, Memorex and no name bulk "store brand" could all be from the exact same factory (with little or no difference in quality). As a general rule for top quality media get "made in Japan" media not "made in Taiwan". For example the Fuji media I get (CD-R and DVD+R) can be found in both Japanese and Taiwanese flavors. The packaging on these look identical except for the "made in xxx" in small print on the label. The Japanese ones are of MUCH better quality. There is one brand that is guaranteed to be top quality and that is Taiyo Yuden (as long as its genuine, it is commonly faked). In fact, the made in Japan Fuji is commonly TY.

Recently i found some of my cd's with redundancy errors, so i begun to backup the more important to DVD's.

What more surprised to me was that the failed cd's were from reputated manufacturers, like traxdata, verbatim, etc, not bulk.

I want to start with the caviet that I don't use CD-RW discs. I have a 4GB microdrive and several "thumbdrives" so if I need the RW capability those devices are what I use.

Having said that, I have had cheap CD-R discs de-laminate in as little as 2 years under ideal storage and I have had quality CD-R discs last more than 6 years under the worst conditions (in a cd-holder behind the visor in my car...surely the worst of conditions). Quality of media MATTERS!

Paper labels are EVIL. I've been told that they have changed the adhesive formula but I don't care. I've had SEVERAL paper stick-on labels pull the whole data layer right off a cd (high quality media too, not cheap crap).

I've heard "experts" warn against writing on the media with "sharpie" markers. I've never had an issue but I also make sure I buy "coated" CD-R media that is intended to be written on.

I think the simplest summary is ... Buy quality media, store it properly, and have multiple copies of each disc you make.

In my opinion the best CD storage ever created (for long term) is the ROMDEX http://tinyurl.com/dg9uf It holds the discs snugly, keeps them spaced out (no moisture buildup), keeps them in a dark environment, and helps you keep the discs organized.

I also do a three-tier approach to data storage.
-On the computer
-On an external HDD (that gets unplugged after synching the data)
-On a CD or DVD (which gets eventually delivered to my inlaws house and put in a firesafe I have there).

I was just about to start a athread on this myself. I agree with the Mitsuis and the Made-in-Japan T-Y discs as having the lowest tblock error rate and generally best stability.

I've heard over the years that Ritek and CMC Magnetics were considered to be the bottom-of-the-barrel manufacturers, but I'm now noticing that these two (particularly CMC) are starting to show up in some name-branded CDRs, including Verbatim and H-P. I have a stack of each of these myself and I was startled to see this.

Are all of the name brand manufacturers outsourcing to the same one or two plants in Taiwan now?
:shrug:

Flash memory is less reliable than cd's or hard discs. It's ok as a transport medium but not for long term storage. Old computers with flash programmed parts have been failing for years.

CD's have quite a lot of error correction bits so they can withstand a fair amount of degradation without unrecoverably losing data. Of course you can go even further and make redundant cd's, either duplicates or using some further error correcting layer.

If you really want to be serious about preserving data, you have to replicate it and you have to copy it to new media every so often. I think archivists are often on the wrong track, trying to find media that they hope won't degrade, then putting all their data in one place and not refreshing it periodicaly. The way to robustness is through making lots of redundant copies, not making one gold-plated bulletproof copy.

www.taobackup.com has good general info on computer backups.

http://www.rosettaproject.org/live/disk has some info on a very high longevity medium that's more expensive than you want to think about.

I had a thread posted on this a couple of years ago. It is called the "digital dark age effect". When I worked for NASA we had to spend millions of dollars in order to salvage data to put onto modern medias or build extra storage for hard copy printouts. I have had some CDR's fail in two years just sitting in a fire resistant humidity controlled vault, and I have others that are 12 years old and still work fine. I just have to remember to come back to my archived stuff every couple of years and make additional copies. There are some data retrieval companies that now make some big bucks to maintain all the various types of machines and formats to retrieve and upgrade data. My father-in-law had to spend 10 grand to retrieve data from some type of obscure zip drive from the early 90's. He now has to task somebody in his organization whose only job is to store and update formats for a group of researchers that only number about 30.

I have some cheap-o CDs from about 1998 that I noticed are starting to bubble and the silver stuff is just peeling off. Other than this batch of CDs, I haven't seen it happen. In fact, just a few days ago I ran out of CDs, so I dug around and found a blank Sony CD (only 4x) that came with my first burner in '98. I put some music on it and it worked great...

BatteryCharger said:

...In fact, just a few days ago I ran out of CDs, so I dug around and found a blank Sony CD (only 4x) that came with my first burner in '98. I put some music on it and it worked great...

Click to expand...

Yes, but did the music have enough cowbell...

One thing that has always spooked me a little bit is the knowledge that the stampers that make the blank, pregrooved CD-Rs get bought and sold. When this happens, maybe the manufacturer changes the ID information in the ATIP track and maybe they don't. In other words, it could be impossible in some cases to verify where a particular CD-R was really made.

I still have few blank 2x CD-Rs from Kodak. They were one of the few major brands that actually had their own stamping plant in France (!) and the ATIP tracks actually identified them as being made by Kodak, as opposed to Taiyo Yuden, CMC or others. I haven't lost any of these Kodaks in several years of "typical" household temperatures, although I think the coating on the topside is a little thin and I worry about getting scratches on the reflective surface.

My really important stuff goes out on Mitsuis.

I've read that MO (magneto-optic) media is the most reliable, but you don't see much of that around anymore since the media doesn't hold much more than a DVD but is much more expensive.