Reminder to plug in any flash media (thumb drives, ssds) from time to time
They can also start to lose data after a couple years without power
A small handful of my burned CDs from 20 years ago are unbearable and as far as I can tell, none of my pressed CDs are. I’m sure they’ll rot eventually but I think your average cd is quite robust. Still, there’s no excuse not to have backups!
Burned CDs use photo sensitive ink to create the 0s & 1s, while pressed CDs physically alter the plastic. Even archival CDs were only rated for like 25yrs
I can confirm, found an old disk from ~15 years ago, was excited to see what was on it. In a jewel case and everything, but completely unreadable :(
Yes, the older ones of the rotating backups are still readable.
But that’s not even the actual problem nowadays: CDs and DVDs were nice when their size was still relevant in comparison to usual amounts of data. The real problem behind their decay is that we are lacking a widely available, properly scaled backup solution for more than a decade. So the mean reason people have now unreadable optical data is that they stopped thinking about it a long time ago for an utter lack of options.
So the mean reason people have now unreadable optical data is that they stopped thinking about it a long time ago for an utter lack of options.
Well, there are 100GB and 120GB Bluray M-Discs. But yeah, the only things larger are either spinning rust (i.e. HDDs that need to be refreshed regularly to prevent bit rot) or very expensive LTO hardware and tapes.
ClOuD sToRaGe
Just had this thought, and realized all my backups had been through a flood. I wound up with several damaged disks, but was able to get all the content off of them, damage was to the outside edges, and most of them didn’t have much data written.
I have a Blu-ray burner, but I’ve never burned one (only a couple DVD’s). Probably never will.
Get some M-Discs and burn a couple of copies of your docs and photos. The theoretical lifetime of M-disc is ~1000 years. Good luck finding a Blu-ray drive in the 30th century though.
Still got a shelf full of 360 discs, I refuse to open them and hope that the cases they’re in protect them for life longer than mine.
Schrodinger’s Disk is both readable and unreadable until you try to read it.
I still refuse to believe in disc rot until I see it happen to me. Until that occurs, I will consider it a urban computer myth.
My old music CDs still work on the stereo and I bought some of my Megadeth albums in 2011. Perhaps music lasts longer than data.
I have cd’s from the 80s, they last if you look after them, but i also think older ones were ‘better’, i’ve definitely had CDRs that have had the printed layer start flaking off
I worry that my lyric booklets will get humidity damage.
It depends on the type of CD you used. The older ones with a Gold layer didn’t degrade as much.
I’ve got regular DVD-R and CD-R discs, si IDK. Maybe I’ve just been pretty lucky because I have never personally experienced this supposed thing we call disc rot.
I was ripping my entire DVD collection and I lost at least 3 movies to disc rot. They looked perfectly good, no scratches or anything when looking in the light, and I’ve always taken good care of my discs (out of sunlight, in their cases, in my house) and yet multiple players just could not read some or all of the disc.
I refuse to believe you have burned and then later used more than a handful of discs if that’s not happened to you. I’ve seen it many, many times.
Back in the days this even happened after a couple of months if you bought the cheaper brands.
