Re: [PLUG] Media durability

[Doug Crompton <doug@crompton.com>]

Most current CD/DVD medias can be expected to last 50-100 years or more on
the shelf in a resonable environment. Early CD's suffered from problems
that were solved. Unfortunately they have not been around long enough to
know this first hand but lab accelerated tests seem to bear this out.
Tape, at least the tape you are referring to was analog and suffered loss
each time you played it due to, amoung other things, mechanical wear and
magnetized heads. Digital has the advantage of no loss until it is
catastrophic. You can always make another copy every 10 years if you
remember!

I often think about all of the electronics, early computers, etc. that had
EPROM's in them. They were only suppose to hold the data for 10 years in
total darkness. I guess this is an issue for the museum folks.

Doug

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