I was wondering about this since in the early days we have had casette which could last like maybe 20 years but eventually the quality would get very poor. Since i now have alot of cd-r and recently started burning on dvd-r I was wondering what I could expect.

I remember vaguely, that in spain there was like a bacteria which could effect the data storage of a cd-r. The data would get damaged and was not readable anymore ?!?!?! dunno if it's true but maybe some of you know more about this

cheers,

DVDs official life is 100years, a better estimate is 50-70years.

CDs was 100years, but that's way off, much lower 50years I'd imagine, unless kept in good conditions of course.

As for the writeble kind, cheap cds can crap out in about a year (seriously), if you go for the quality brands, paricularly verbs, they will last lot longer, tests show about 20years or more.

DVDs life time is supposed to be slightly longer but around the same.

The problem is, both formats are way too new to give an accurate life expectancy at this time. However, if you buy decent enough media, you will get a 5 to 10 year life expectancy, pretty much garanteed. I still have the first cds I backed up ages ago that are readable.

CDrot you need to look out for, these are normally present in discs you can see through, and will look like tiny holes on the top side. This is the disc physically erroding and marks crap brands. Many readers incorporate decent error correction that still means you can access naff discs.

With CDrot, you will also know if the disc has become unreadable by the presence of crc errors. I've been quite lucky not to have many naffed cds by degredation, but I have a few. At the time they were ranging between 1 to 5 years old (and all cds)

If your paying a decent some and not cheaping out, you have a decent lifespan on the discs. This is digital quality here so it either works or doesn't, you just have to get decent enough built media so it doesn't degrade to an unreadable state

i thought it was the other way around.. that cds had a slightly longer life expectancy than dvds.. since data is spaced so much closer on dvds.. (of course that's just my brain talking, not facts, but it seemed logical)

Ok so even when one has bought an original cd the life expectance is still up to about 50-70 years which makes me think that vinyl is still far superior for the storage of music IMHO. As far as my knowledge goes this can last for eternity if treated right that is.

As for data storage i kinda makes me wonder how the hell I am goiing to watch all me movies in that amount of time. Even when i am retired i don't have enough time to watch the d/l shit before the discs are getiin corrupted and become of inferior quality.

And CD-rot.............. i have a shitload of discs where u can see through but there doesn't seem to be any corrodin. I did notice that some of me discs, you can not see through have changed colour.

So the best thing to do is to backup your copies after 10 years or something like that????

the thing is, build quality is vastly superior on DVDr discs than on cdr... with retail quality version of both, you may very well be, and I believe are correct.