[SGVLUG] CD permanency

[Mike Fedyk]

Marsden MacRae wrote:
> On 10/14/05 Dustin said
>
>> Something else I forgot to stress: optical discs aren't really 
>> permanent.
>> They work just fine for an ongoing backup process of data that you keep
>> "live" on a hard disk somewhere, but I would be unhappy if someone took
>> what I said as a licence to archive their family photos to a CD/DVD and
>> then delete them, figuring the disc will be there forever.
>>
>> Dustin 
>
>
> I can't find (digging through my trash, er "archived LUG threads") any 
> further discussion on this.
>
> Can anybody expand on this? We're about to buy more disks, is there 
> some criteria I should use to determine "which disk to buy" for 
> "permanence"? Off list or pointers to informative sites welcomed!
Quality CDs typically last 5 years before having to be "refreshed", 
which means copied to another CD.  This isn't too bad since technology 
tends to improve over those years, and the total number of 
CD/DVD/future-optical-disk reduces on each cycle.

Mike