"Only if the info is alive and moving it will prevail and never die, CD/DVD are good for a year or two, but no more..."
Another more realistic way of looking at is "Anything that moves will break - the only unknown is exactly when it will break". Interesting things happen to hard drives when subjected to intense shock from unexpected things like earthquakes and nearby explosions.
Buy quality disks, use good quality burners and take some care where you will store them and you will have much better luck. No one says the CD/DVD's will "never die" but they will last a lot longer than a couple of years.
This CLIR study has lots of information on the subject. http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html
Here are some suggestions on how you might get better life from your CD/DVR's. http://www.recovery-portal.com/shelf-life-of-recordable-cd-dvd-media/
I have many recordable disks that are over 10 years old and they are error free.
The only truly proven portable long term storage media is papyrus, parchment and bronze. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
Most data on other things comes from accelerated aging studies which are little better than a shot in the dark.
73 W9KE Tom Doyle
On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 7:24 PM, M.Sc. Pavel Milanes Costa < [email protected]> wrote:
A flash back from a 3rd country....
El 12/10/15 a las 02:50, Phil Karn escribió:
Years ago I came to the conclusion that the best way to preseve digital information is to "keep it spinning"
That's what my team calls a "live repository of information", we in Cuba with almost ZERO network available have managed to create a live repository... the live example of "Keep it spinning"
A few technical oriented group of people - hamradio operators or not - have a huge doc repository (tech papers, articles, blueprints, operating/technical manuals/schematics of any type, handbooks, etc) that get mirrored as flash drives and huge USB portable HDDs. When some one have a new bunch of GBs of good info it notifies the group and the propagation of the info begins... every member has it's subject of interest, but we have manage to get at least 2 copies of the same info...
Copyrights is not an issue here at least for the moment.
A few times in the year I get request from one or more people of the group to meet and recover a few Gb of info about X subject after it's HDD collapse, even I had used this trick a few months ago with the loss of my 1TB Portable drive to recover the ~25 Gb ham/commercial radio manual/schematics folder organized by manufacturer and even the CAT/Programming soft for almost all...
Only if the info is alive and moving it will prevail and never die, CD/DVD are good for a year or two, but no more...
That's my live example of the "Keep it spinning" of Phil
73 from Cuba, CO7WT.
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