Chuck Norcutt writes:
========================
We recently had some discussion of the archival capabilities of the
various CD types. I stated that I thought CD-R (since it's not
rewritable) would be stable. However, in the January 18, 2000 issue of
PC Magazine (page 124) there is an article titled "Optical Drive
Compatibility". In the discussion of CD-R the author notes that CD-R is
subject to possible data loss if exposed to direct sunlight.
========================
I'd be careful putting too much stock into anything printed in PC Magazine.
Most of the authors who write for the PC rags are not authorities on
anything related to computing. In fact, many of them do this work because
they don't have the credentials for other types of employment in the
computing field. This behavior of CD-ROMs might be true, but I'd find
a better source than PC Magazine if you want reliable information about the
archival properties of CD-ROMs. I'd be more concerned about other types of
information decay than exposure to direct sunlight. If they didn't discuss
other types of ways archival capability could be compromised, I wouldn't
assume that there aren't any.
==================
I assume that Photo-CD is CD-R technology. It's supposed to be good for
100 years (assuming you keep it out of the direct sun I guess).
==================
Do you really think you'll be able to read a CD-R in 100 years even if
the information contained on it is good? What if you had archived
something on 8" floppy disks back when those were the standard for larger
capacity backup for PC's? How would you read them today? In the 80's,
streamers tapes were fairly standard for unix machines, and some higher end
PC's had them. I haven't seen many drives around lately to read those either.
What about reel-to-reel mag. tape that used to be the standard for
mini-computers and mainframes? Some years ago, I tossed a bunch of source
code for software I had written over several years because it was stored on
these and I didn't see many of these drives around any more. In this case,
the computers that would run the software were fairly non-existent as well,
so that was fine.
But the point is that computer technology changes so rapidly that you'd have
to copy all of your images from the obsolescent media to the newfangled
media every 10 years or so anyway if you want to guarantee being able to
read it. Since I don't expect to have time to do this, my preference for
archiving images is to use color slides and B&W negatives. Even if
photochemical printing becomes obsolete, we'll always be able to scan
images, I think.
Joseph
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