I second all Eric said except that we keep our individual disks in paper envelopes because they take up much less space. Jan keeps her archive library in zippered CD albums.
I too have had not had significant problems with data loss on optical media as long as there was no obvious physical damage. I would add that the printed side of the disk seems to be the most prone to damage. I get the ones with a white, printable, coating hoping it is more durable. Using cheaper blank media is a good way to loose data. Try Googling the subject. I found a very wide range of longevity has been reported. The only consensus seems to be to buy quality media and store carefully. I now buy only Taiyo-Yuden DVD+R printable (white) media. Although we have dual-layer burners in our laptops, we have never used this type of media. I have read that there are reliability problems with it. I'd rather spend the extra cost on high quality single-layer media instead. Solid state flash media may be the next step for us. Now at $28 for 16 GB, the price for HDSC keeps dropping steadily (2 GB for my camera cost me $50 two years ago. 16 GB would have been $400 at that rate!). HD storage is below $100/TB now for 3.5" bare drive, drop-in interface @$15 with mail-in coupon. Used only for archiving and refreshed from time to time the high capacity per dollar may be a good fit too. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek 30 07.695N 081 38.484W > Phillip, > Do you store your s in a hard cover? > Have you tried to "clean" and restore the CDs? > Did you use CD-RW discs? > All of these points MATTER. > Clean the CDs using a powered cleaner. Never use re-writeable media. > Always keep your discs in hard plastic "jewel cases". > > I have many DVDs that are over 2 years old. NONE of them have gone bad... > > Eric Thompson > S/V Procrastinator > South San Francisco > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
