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How long will your CD's last?



Dear Colleagues,

 

Have you backed up your critical data to CD for long term preservation?

 

Are you asking the question, how long will my CD last before I need to transfer it to another media?


Have you done our costing on how much the process will involve and how many times you will need to readdress the situation for long term preservation data e.g. personnel records over time? In Western Australia the Retention and Disposal schedule advises 71 years.

 

How about your forever type data?

 

The Australian Broadcasting Commission “ABC” in its program Catalyst presented on Thursday, 25 October 2001 provided the following story.

 

The article is available at the following www address:

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s400527.htm

 

Do you have fungus on your CDs? Which stated:

 

If you have a CD you think has been affected by the Geotrichum candidum fungus mentioned in tonight's edition of Catalyst's news, the Spanish team analysing the CD fungi is looking for more samples of bio-deteriorated CDs.

So far they have samples from Germany, Mexico, Guatemala, Taiwan and Spain.

You can contact the research team leader, Javier Garcia Guinea, via email at guinea@mncn.csic.es.

Alternatively, you can visit his research web page at Museo Nacional Ciencias Naturales for more information on the fungus and further contact details.

About us

 

 

Nothing changes over time it only gets more interesting.

 

In an article in Business Week: April 20, 1998, Department: Science & Technology: COMPUTERS titled DATA STORAGE: FROM DIGITS TO DUST the following was stated.

The data lost from the Viking Mars mission, for example, was trapped on decaying digital magnetic tape, forcing NASA to call mission specialists out of retirement to help the agency reconstruct key data. ``Digital information lasts forever, or five years--whichever comes first,'' says Jeff Rothenberg, senior computer scientist at RAND Corp.

Forget forever. Under less-than-optimal storage conditions, digital tapes and disks, including CD-ROMs and optical drives, might deteriorate about as fast as newsprint--in 5 to 10 years. Tests by the National Media Lab, a St. Paul (Minn.)-based government and industry consortium, show that tapes might preserve data for a decade, depending on storage conditions. Disks--whether CD-ROMs used for games or the type used by some companies to store pension plans--may become unreadable in five years.

 

Happy Archiving!

 

Regards, Laurie

 

Mr Daniel Lawrance [Laurie] Varendorff, ARMA

 

Consultant/Trainer/Tutor/Presenter: Records and information Management

Imaging and Micrographic Specialist with 25 years experience

 

The Varendorff Consultancy

The Australian Distributor for A&P International

Scanner & Micrographic Resolution Test Targets

Visit our www site: http://www.pressenter.com/~apintl/

 

ABN: 77 836 801 165

27 Ronneby Rd, Lesmurdie, Western Australia 6076 - AUSTRALIA

 

PHONE: +61 8 9291 6925 - MOBILE: +61 0417 094 147

EMAIL: Laurie.Varendorff@Bigpond.com