archival cd-r - really true?

[Jim Leonard]

Richard wrote:
>> My concern is that things I record now on cd-r might not last even 5-10
>> years.
> 
> I'm skeptical when someone says that CD-Rs won't last, because as you
> mention with sunlight, how the disc is stored and treated is probably
> just as important, if not more, than the media itself.  

I second this.  I started burning CDRs in 1996 on the cheapest media I 
could find back then.  Just now I took one out of its CD folder (a black 
200-disc folder that does not let light through), which I store in my 
basement, and every single data file read just fine.  10 years and counting.

Sometimes I get paranoid, and I archive my data using two redundant methods:

1. I take the data and split it into parts, then generate parity 
information for the parts.  This way I can lose up to N parts as long as 
I have N chunks of parity info.  (I use WinRAR with "recovery volumes" 
if you're curious.)

2. I then take the data+parity and burn it onto one disc, then do it 
again on another.  Just in case.

CPU speed and blank DVDrs are cheap enough nowadays that this adds 1% of 
effort to a process that gives me 3-4x more reliability.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
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