Just for a grin I called the folks who make the CD-R's I use (IMATION) and
asked them the shelf life of a CD-R after it was recorded.  They report 50
years.

Byron Welch
Manager Consulting Services
Creative Computing, Inc.
100 Middle Street
Lincoln, RI 02865


-----Original Message-----
From: Stan Sieler [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 4:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Converting tapes to CD rom?


Re:
> Hi Denys :)
>    Ok... 5 years seems kinda short?  I mean I have music cd's that are
still
> great after oh... about 13+ years... are you referring to CD-R's?  I was

Denys wrote:
> > I have news for you my friend.  CD-ROMs start going bad after 5 years.
CD
> is
> > definitely not a long term storage solution.

I have to agree with Denys.  The subject arose recently on the
Classic Computer mailing list, where people are interested in preserving
really old stuff :)

The consensus was that CDROMs are specified for about 5 years.
IIRC, reel tapes are about 10 years.  I don't recall DDS/DAT or DLT specs.

BTW, we've recently been reading a bunch of old reel tapes for a customer,
and have had a couple of problems out of 20+ tapes.  The oldest we've read
for them so far was about 18 years old (and it had no problems).



Stan Sieler                                           [log in to unmask]
www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html          www.allegro.com/sieler