According to this article at computerworl.com.




Anyone worried about their digital collection now?

Uhoh...

I thought this was about Dire Straits

I wish it had been.

Do the walk of life"

You check out guitar george he knows all the chords
Mind he’s strictly rhythm he doesn’t want to make it cry or sing

Here I am again with this mean old disc
And you're so far away from me...
I need a certain image and I'm getting pissed
Cause it's so far away from me...

i was told microwaving CD's was especial dire

Is this the new "End of the World" theory?

This was worth the time put in ~

Seriously though, this is a story that's been around a while. There have been fears about the lifespan of CDs (among other digital storage formats) for some years now.

I've seen/heard several programmes about digital archivists voicing fears that a lot of old data and documents that have been painstakingly transferred from paper, vellum, parchment, microfiche and numerous other forms for the sake of "preservation" are now having to be frequently re-copied and updated as digital media formats are in fact more vulnerable to degradation (and of course obsolescence) than other methods.

And the more people (and organisations) transfer their critical data and historical archives purely to digital format and ditch older forms of backup, the greater this problem is likely to become.
(Not to mention the problems that happen when there is the inevitable "system failure" - as a techie myself, it always annoys me when corporations or government departments blame "computer error" or "I.T." when their whole system goes tits up, when the real problems are greed (oh sorry, "efficiency savings") and poor disaster planning and preparation!)

Moral of the story is that boring but essential data storage mantra: always make a backup! (And take a hard copy backup too where appropriate/possible)

(Nice to "see" you around, Mr. Tool!

I just recently bought a dedicated Hard Disk recorder (120GIG) to back up my digital images. I also back them up on DVD. I'm hoping that between the two I will have some hope of accessing these images when I have grandkiddies interested in such things.

But since that won't be for a lifetime or two, I'm not holding my breath on the DVD technology. So far, Hard disks have stayed relatively stable in their design.

Just in case all this fails I have photocopied all my work on a Xerox machine using Pigment Toner. The result isn't so great... but as long as it doesn't catch fire I'll be okay.

. . .

do what the canuck says and get a extra HD, its the safest/most affordable option i think, the problem with cds is the quality of the "ink" layers that lie in it, bad quality ink/polymer combination means low lifespan because the ink will fade away along with your bytes. So the more you spend on a blank cd/dvd the more it will last, never go for cheap brands, its not worth the money saved.

I must've been living under a rock as this was the first I'd heard of it. But then again I'm not in charge of the backups at work. And since I'm new to the digital camera world I guess I never had reason to look into it before now.

I remember reading/seeing a report that a company was working on a system that would allow for holographic storage. Something about a cube that was written to by a laser. The report said it was in the realm of experimentation still but that it was looking more and more feasible. The theoretical storage capabilities were enormous.

This got me to thinking. My daughter gave me a prism that has a 3D golfer burned into the interior by laser (yeah it's really cool looking). That image is permanent as the frosted glass is on the protected interior of the prism itself. Maybe this holographic storage idea would be the closest thing to permanent storage that we could get?

Yeah, I'm a geek... I looked it up:

http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/443/ashley.html

and the ever present Google results.

I like it when stuff goes tits up.

I'm sorry that was more of a Reinman comment.