Article on data rot on CD's

From: Joe R. <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Wed Jul 28 11:11:26 2004

At 09:35 AM 7/28/04 -0400, you wrote:
>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,


   The problem is that AFIK no one has found ANY CD disks that are
reliable. Several people that have been interviewed in national
publications explictly pointed out that they bought top quality disks but
they were still unreliable. In fact, it didn't appear that there was much
difference between the cheap ones and the expensive ones.

   Joe




 and I
>would urge caution in anyone relying on them to save important data.
>
>Kirill
>
>
Received on Wed Jul 28 2004 - 11:11:26 BST