Should you store treasured data on disks?

[Basil Chupin]

Preserving precious data, such as pictures and home videos, on CDs and 
DVDs could do more damage than good in the end.

That's what the French National Centre for Scientific Research has found 
out after testing the longevity of the portable media.

"We were surprised to see that the lifetime of discs, some of which were 
designed to last for centuries, actually rarely lasted longer than five 
to 10 years," said physicist Franck Laloe.

"In the most severe cases, which were happily quite rare, the data on 
some discs lasted just one year," he said.

Unlike audio and video tapes that wear out with play, discs are read 
with a laser so there is no physical contact.

However, the surface which contains more than seven miles of data is 
deteriorating with age.


Rest of story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8711747.stm

-- 
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.