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Date:	Mon, 16 Aug 2004 01:10:18 PDT7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: CD Longevity

Content Type: text/plain

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Jerry Garren wrote:
>

Well hi there Jerry, what's new up there in Los Osos / Morro Bay / San
Luis Obispo?

> Does anyone have links to more information on this subject.

I tried a few different searches and this one for "CD life expectancy"
seemed to work:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=CD+life+expectancy

> I have read that brand names are not useful because of frequent
> changes by manufacturers of components and techniques.

Yes, they constantly change just about everything -- manufacturing
equipment, procedures, workstation time per unit, materials suppliers,
formulations, clean room maintenance -- so you're not going to find
anything that's "center of the bell shaped curve".

> Also can improper 'burning' contribute to this problem. That is can the
> drive contribute to early failure. It would seem reasonable this could
> be the case.

Sure. There seems to be a direct link between faster burn speed and
less reliable CDs, so those bits on the CD that are "just barely okay"
are more likely to degrade sooner.

The industry I spent years in has been heavily archiving media for
almost a century (that's a lot longer than computers have been backed
up). If the archiving failed then they lost out on a lot of money. The
bottom line is this: *All* archival media fail eventually (CD, DVD,
backup tapes, hard drive copies, phonograph records, wax cylinders,
videotape, film) and you need to design your archiving process knowing
that the archival copies you make will eventually fail. Basically you
need multiple copies and you need to "refresh" your archives every once
in a while, typically by making new copies from the existing ones (if
you remember Steve Gibson's SpinRite program, it "refreshed" the sectors
on your hard drive by rewriting each one).

I personally prefer hard drive archiving which is now cheaper than
CD/DVD (unless you completely fill your CDs and DVDs). Here's the
math: 50 cents per gigabyte for hard drive storage which is very
flexible and you can fill up the hard drive with lots of different
sources, versus 20 cents for a 0.7 gigabyte CD where you waste a lot of
the space unless you only burn them when you have enough to "fill them
up". Plus, a hard drive is a lot easier to make another copy of.

- Peter

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