On 9/21/18 9:47 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 6:08 PM Ed Greshko
<ed.greshko(a)greshko.com> wrote:
> On 9/21/18 7:42 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 2:47 PM Samuel Sieb <samuel(a)sieb.net> wrote:
>>
>>> That is true, but there is also a reasonable chance or losing them,
>>> breaking them, or other random failures. When a flash drive dies, it's
>>> gone, very difficult to recover if even possible. I would not recommend
>>> a flash drive (or DVD) alone for long-term storage.
>> All CD and DVD consumer burnable (R or RW) are not suitable for long
>> term storage. The dyes used are not gonna very long, maybe a few
>> years. If they're kept in the dark at stable temperature, I'd be
>> surprised if they lasted 5 years. Bluray is a different story, and
>> with proper storage shows some promise of being readable for quite a
>> while, but you're gonna have to put a drive, cables, and a computer
>> into cold storage along with the discs so... good luck.
>>
> FWIW, I think I must be very lucky. I have just checked several of my TDK DVD-RW
> disks that were written between 2003 and 2005.
> I'd forgotten all about them until reading this. They've been sitting on the
top of
> a cabinet that is exposed to indirect sunlight and temp ranges of
> between the 60's and 80's and high humidity. (I fight with my wife about the
A/C in
> the summer).
>
> All of them read just fine. Which is good since I'd been looking for the photos
of
> one of our departed cats which were "lost" due to an HD failure.
Yes, lucky. Make copies, quick!
Well, since I did forget about them and it has been 15 years (3X your upper end
estimate) I don't think they are that important. I'll
check them again in another 15 years. If I have a DVD drive at that time. :-)
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