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Im always sceptical about these claims of archive longevity. IIRC when CD-Rs were first available, they were touted as suitable for century long archives. The r

Im always sceptical about these claims of archive longevity. IIRC when CD-Rs were first available, they were touted as suitable for century long archives. The reality was far from that.

simonh 7y ago
High quality discs are capable of that, the problem is the drives to read them all broke down. For an ultra-long term storage medium like this that's moot. If someone wants to read one of these in a billion years, they'll just have to develop the tech, but that would be true of any such long term mass storage medium. It's not necessarily a strike against this particular implementation.
- Krasnol 7y ago
  > they were touted as suitable for century long archives. I can't remember this statement from those times. Only people who said that tape is still the better/safer medium for music and backups. I even had a zip drive for that.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Magnetic tapes suffer from print-through though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print-through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print-through
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  > High quality discs are capable of that, the problem is the drives to read them all broke down. What are you referring to? I assume you're not just talking about "high quality" compact discs, since we have plenty of readers for those.
  - chii 7y ago
    The OP meant the drives would've broken down before the disks would degrade.
    - simonh 7y ago
      I think the original comment about optical disks was talking about very early formats, before CDs were standardised, such as the drives used for the Doomsday Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project
wongarsu 7y ago
You can still buy archive CD-Rs rated for 300 years. That didn't prevent everyone from buying cheap crap that barely lasts 5 years before becoming unreadable.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  I bought some archival CD-Rs 15 years ago and backed up a bunch of personal documents and photos. Different brands of CD-Rs too. Tested them, all worked fine. 7 years later not a single one works. I tried different drives. It was a painful loss. I learned my lesson. Now I back everything up into at least 2 different methods: cloud + HDD. Cloud has been the most reliable so far. Some HDDs have failed (humidity killed the circuit boards).

Im always sceptical about these claims of archive longevity. IIRC when CD-Rs were first available, they were touted as suitable for century long archives. The reality was far from that.

simonh 7y ago

High quality discs are capable of that, the problem is the drives to read them all broke down. For an ultra-long term storage medium like this that's moot. If someone wants to read one of these in a billion years, they'll just have to develop the tech, but that would be true of any such long term mass storage medium. It's not necessarily a strike against this particular implementation.

Krasnol 7y ago
> they were touted as suitable for century long archives. I can't remember this statement from those times. Only people who said that tape is still the better/safer medium for music and backups. I even had a zip drive for that.
- simonh 7y ago
  Magnetic tapes suffer from print-through though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print-through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print-through
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> High quality discs are capable of that, the problem is the drives to read them all broke down. What are you referring to? I assume you're not just talking about "high quality" compact discs, since we have plenty of readers for those.
- chii 7y ago
  The OP meant the drives would've broken down before the disks would degrade.
  - simonh 7y ago
    I think the original comment about optical disks was talking about very early formats, before CDs were standardised, such as the drives used for the Doomsday Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project

wongarsu 7y ago

You can still buy archive CD-Rs rated for 300 years. That didn't prevent everyone from buying cheap crap that barely lasts 5 years before becoming unreadable.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
I bought some archival CD-Rs 15 years ago and backed up a bunch of personal documents and photos. Different brands of CD-Rs too. Tested them, all worked fine. 7 years later not a single one works. I tried different drives. It was a painful loss. I learned my lesson. Now I back everything up into at least 2 different methods: cloud + HDD. Cloud has been the most reliable so far. Some HDDs have failed (humidity killed the circuit boards).