G
Guest
Guest
Re: \"... the average CD to last about five years\"
Possibly. It is undoubtedly the case that CD's don't last long, and the manufacturers don't claim that they do. It is possible to buy CD's which are claimed to last longer, based on more archivaly stable materials, but even these are not supposed to last very long.
The five year figure is based on my own impression from burning CD's: I burned about 30 of them with pictures on two years ago, which were fine when I burnt them. Now three of them are unreadable, ie. 10% in two years. I would expect the failure rate to increase as the materials age.
Another example: I recently heard of one Polish magazine that archived its materials on CD. It has now discovered that a large proportion of its archives are irrecoverable. It has learnt the hard way and is converting what is left of ts materials to a different system.
Whether my five years forecast is accurate or not, it is undoubtedly the case, and widely accepted in photography circles, that CD's are an archivally unstable method of storing pictures, and that you can expect to lose data stored on them sooner or later. I think that five years is a reasonable time to expect a CD to last.
My use of a dedicated 200GB hard disk for the purpose is also not perfect, and I also back all digital pictures up in two other locations. Soon I will be exceeding the 200GB limit and will have to get another drive. I take important pictures on slide in the first place, so I always have the original to refer to if both fail. But I know that if the 200GB hard disk fails, a specialist company will probably be able to recover the data. I would not rely on CD's as a primary way of storing image files.
<hr width=100% size=1>
Possibly. It is undoubtedly the case that CD's don't last long, and the manufacturers don't claim that they do. It is possible to buy CD's which are claimed to last longer, based on more archivaly stable materials, but even these are not supposed to last very long.
The five year figure is based on my own impression from burning CD's: I burned about 30 of them with pictures on two years ago, which were fine when I burnt them. Now three of them are unreadable, ie. 10% in two years. I would expect the failure rate to increase as the materials age.
Another example: I recently heard of one Polish magazine that archived its materials on CD. It has now discovered that a large proportion of its archives are irrecoverable. It has learnt the hard way and is converting what is left of ts materials to a different system.
Whether my five years forecast is accurate or not, it is undoubtedly the case, and widely accepted in photography circles, that CD's are an archivally unstable method of storing pictures, and that you can expect to lose data stored on them sooner or later. I think that five years is a reasonable time to expect a CD to last.
My use of a dedicated 200GB hard disk for the purpose is also not perfect, and I also back all digital pictures up in two other locations. Soon I will be exceeding the 200GB limit and will have to get another drive. I take important pictures on slide in the first place, so I always have the original to refer to if both fail. But I know that if the 200GB hard disk fails, a specialist company will probably be able to recover the data. I would not rely on CD's as a primary way of storing image files.
<hr width=100% size=1>
