[Coco] DVD Archival - Was Re: Roger Taylors Coco DVD

[Manny]

Chris Lomont wrote:
> DVD archive quality is NOT quite that cut and dried, though. 70+ years 
> assumes the DVD has very special storage conditions, is not being used, 
> and you are very lucky on many fronts. A slightly older NIST study 
> (http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/StabilityStudy.pdf) found that 
> although some DVD versions may last tens of years, they also found 
> considerable variation among manufacturers and even found some disks may 
> fail in as short a time as a *few weeks* if they are in sunlight (which 
> eats the dyes in recordable DVDs/CDs), not to mention the variation on 
> DVD and CD burners, writing speed, etc.
> 
> So please don't buy into the marketing claims that DVDs or CDs are good 
> for archival backup. I know a few photographers that have made this 
> mistake only to find their photos eaten after only a few years, even 
> using name brand backups.
> 
> Thus the best backup is multiple backups, with frequent comparisons to 
> remove and replace rotting data as soon as possible. For my work I use 
> an offsite RAID system, and that is even backed up to single drives from 
> time to time.

^^^ THAT'S what I was trying to say. :)

-M.