Article on data rot on CD's

From: Kirill Levchenko <kirill_at_lava.net>
Date: Wed Jul 28 08:35:21 2004

On Tuesday, July 27, 2004, at 11:57 AM, McFadden, Mike wrote:

> I saw this today on USA today website. I've been scanning 50 year old
> slides to CD's and I still have my older PDP-11 data backed up as paper
> listings and now on CD's.

This is the paradox of digital archival: while the data can be copied
indefinitely without loss of quality, the life expectancy of the
storage medium is nowhere near traditional media. Cheap recordable
compact discs are notorious for their short life expectancy, and I
would urge caution in anyone relying on them to save important data.

Kirill
Received on Wed Jul 28 2004 - 08:35:21 BST