The life span of digital input should be, by all rights, a forever thing. It all boils down to mathematics, after all, and that’s not likely to change. So although the input itself should always be usable, the real question of longevity depends on the media it’s stored on, and that’s where we’re in trouble.

Makers of CD-R and DVD-R media claim digital goods burned to these discs will last at least 75 years whether properly handled and stored. According to recent studies, however, that most likely is not true. Unlike prepressed discs, the surfaces of home-burned CDs and DVDs are much more susceptible to scratches, warps, cracks and layer separation.

Most cracks tend to seem near the disc’s center hub, which takes the most physical abuse. Unfortunately, that’s additionally where the disc stores its indexing tracks, and once they are ruined, the entire disc usually is unreadable.

The real problem, in terms of long-term

storage, is material degradation. Optical discs used for burning consists of a thin layer of organic dye that’s modified by a laser to store digital notes. Cheap varietys use lower-grade dyes that can shift by instance, rendering the disc unreadable. These discs actually can go poor within only a few years.

There’s little doubt that optical discs will be replaced by better storage technology — going the way of vinyl records, photographic negatives and magnetic tape — but even now we’re still able to access goods stored on outdated media. that might not be true of user-created optical discs.

That’s not very reassuring for anyone trying to preserve memories — original photos, videos, documents and the like — by burning them to disc. Imagine the disappointment, in the year 2015, when you pop in a DVD burned in 2008, expecting a pleasant blast from your past but get no further…

Orginal post by Mike

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