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DVD +/- R/RW shelf life before crapping out
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nakanenui
Junior Member
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10. September 2003 @ 12:43 |
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Does anyone have any experience with dvd disks deteriorating over time... ie you shelve your disk and later when you want to watch whats on the disk it is plays back all F*'d up. I have come across a lot of my back up cds like that. I can only assume it was because of the shitty cd quality. Does this happen with the new dvd disks, or am I just being paranoid?
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wvumaniac
Newbie
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10. September 2003 @ 16:34 |
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The wonderful thing about DVDs and CDs are they are technically never supposed to deteriorate. They're supposed to be nice and good forever. However, if you use a disc a lot, leave it outside its plastic hard casing, let your kids play with it, use it as a frisbee with your dog, or whatever miscellaneous and tortureous things you can do to one, then you're S-O-L. The discs are only meant to be inside the plastic cases, the ones as if you were supposed to buy a brand new one in a store. They are not safe from scratches inside the CD binders that so many of us have. Also, make sure you protect the outer coating, where the lable normally goes, because once a bit of that gets scratched off, bent, folded, mutilated, the CD/DVD is done for. Best of luck.
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TL0
Junior Member
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10. September 2003 @ 18:50 |
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DVD-/+R discs are too new for anyone to know their true life expectancy under good storage conditions (ie: dark,cool & dust free storage place).
Manufacturers claim lifetimes of upto 100 years for good quality DVD media but who knows how it'll be in reality. Got CD's burnt in 1998 which are still going strong & similar life-expectancy claims are made by the manufacturers for these too.
I don't personally think any organic-dye based optical media will last as long as 100 years but if it's over 50 years+ for the best quality media, i'll be quite happy. Cheaper stuff (Princo dye discs for instance) ;) don't seem to even manage 1 year for a worrying percentage of the discs made.
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nakanenui
Junior Member
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11. September 2003 @ 06:41 |
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ok, that answers my question. I will keep all future disks in their respective plastic cases. I will not buy cheap disk media. And I was so looking forward to watching my movies that I already have stored in my cd/dvd binders. Now im going to have to put them back in their cases. Too bad I already through them out for space saving purposes... oh well, crap. Thanks for the info guys.
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modelt
Newbie
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11. September 2003 @ 08:54 |
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I have done some reading about the shelf life. From what I can gather the life shelf life of CD and DVD (not RW) is 50 to 100 years just based on the life of the dyes used. But the rub comes in is the exposer to environmental problems. The orginal life testing by manufactures of CD and DVD was done only with temperature and humidity cycling. Therefore the possible damage caused by other gases and pollution in environment was not considered. CD's are made with the dye on one side of a plastic disc then covered as the manufature desires. DVD's by defintion have the dye sandwiched between two plastic disc. If the DVD's are sealed properly at the edges, it would appear to me that DVD's would have a better shelf life then CD's. I may be wasting my time but have started copying all of my backup CD's to DVD's of good quality.
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sethk
Junior Member
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11. September 2003 @ 12:00 |
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TL0
Junior Member
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11. September 2003 @ 18:52 |
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ken0042
Senior Member
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12. September 2003 @ 11:43 |
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One thing to add from personal experience. I have a CD that I throw into my stereo before going to bed. I fall asleep listening to it. Now after a few years I noticed the sound wasn't quite right on it. Sure enough, after having been played over 1000 times the CD had started to deteriorate. And that was a store bought CD, not a CD-R.
The best advise I can give is similar to that given above. Just to add that it is better to store the DVD-R's in the black clamshell cases to keep the light out. Also constant temperature and humidity are important.
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nakanenui
Junior Member
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12. September 2003 @ 13:29 |
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thank you all for contributing. I have dvd cases on order. Tried blockbuster and asked for their dvd cases that they throw away and got some that way. FREE is free. For my backups, does anyone consider ritek QUALITY media. If not, what brands would be considered quality media without the posibility of $2.00 coasters during backup phase?
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TL0
Junior Member
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12. September 2003 @ 15:09 |
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Ritek are decent media but from personal experience, the quality control of a lot of their discs can be variable.
The K-probe graphs i have of Ritek manufactured G03-dye media & Arita +R media (using the Ricoh dye formulation, but made by Ritek) are not what i would call satisfactory for really important long-term storage.
It's fine for day-to-day stuff & should still last a fair while but i'm leaning towards buying some DVD-R made by Verbatim (MCC made in Japan type only, not the CMC Taiwan stuff), Taiyo Yuden (Most Fuji branded DVD-R media in USA should be this type, but you'll have to check), TDK (Think it's TDK's own-made i believe), Panasonic or Pioneer DVD-R's should all be acceptable for long-term storage. This is based primarily on research on the various forums & articles i've read-up.
Still new to this DVD burning business myself so am looking for advice/other people's experiences too.
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