Dear Arachnes, Susan has a good point about CD/ DVD stability. Many of us assume that these are permanent media, seduced by the media hype when they first came out described as indestructible.
>From a recent technology review Quote: Commercial DVDs are expected to last more than 50 years, assuming they are pressed correctly on good quality media, and then stored in a cool, dark, dry place. Heat, humidity, handling and atmospheric pollution are all believed to reduce the life of optical disks, based on accelerated ageing tests, but nobody really knows. DVDs that are burned separately, perhaps as backups, could last anything from 20 years to 200 years. However, read-write (RW) discs should never be used for archiving: they are not as stable and many may not last 15 years. According to a study by America's National Institute of Standards (NIST) and the Library of Congress, some could last only two years. There's a summary at The X-Lab: http://www.tinyurl.com/yq97nf Optical media are very variable, but Digital FAQ has published a brand media guide. http://www.tinyurl.com/2u48l Endquote The cheaper R/W discs and some of the older CD writers produced a very shallow burn onto the disk so their stability was very poor - anyone who has tried to burn a Rewritable CD and then tried it in a car CD player and found it won't play will have met this problem. If you have anything precious consider checking that disks still read and make a second copy. Of course old floppy disks and magnetic tape are worse still! Regards Louise - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]
