Re: facs archive media

From: Adrian Smith (A.Smith@centenary.usyd.edu.AU)
Date: Sun Aug 01 1999 - 19:11:08 EST


>Based on the assumption you recently lost some CD-R data.....
>
>A recent article in Adobe's magazine discusses the stability or digital
>media. Apparently, the life span of the CD-R has been vastly over estimated,
>and they now give 30 years as a maximum storage life. The problem, of
>course, is that there is now such much data on this medium, and it all needs
>to be re-recorded every 15 years or so to fresh media, but this obviously
>won't happen. They state that thus far, the most durable storage media is
>acid free paper, followed by microfiche.
>
>I guess this means we should be refreshing our CD-R recorded FCS data files
>every decade??
>
>Just a reminder to store your CD-R's on end, as storing them flat will
>encourage warping of the media. This goes for any optical storage medium.
>
>Hopefully we can all retire before this becomes a problem :-)
>

That last sentence sounds exactly like what I would imagine 
programmers were saying 15 years ago about Y2K... :)

Adrian
(who will certainly not be retired in 15 years...)



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