18 July, 2005
Most Reliable CD-Rs Available?
Darren wrote this 8:05 am:
If you’re worried about the (short) shelf-life of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, this product may be for you. Delkin is claiming their Archival Gold CD-R is the most reliable CD-R on the planet, with a storage life of 300 years. They’re not cheap, though, at USD$136 per 100!
I haven’t used these, let alone tested them, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether to believe the marketing hype or not.
Filed under: Equipment
2 Comments
2 Responses to “Most Reliable CD-Rs Available?”
July 18th, 2005 at 9:05 am
I could never trust claims like that even though it’s from a reputable companies. The best strategy is to diversify your backups.
I heard Gold CD-R’s are the best, but can they really test for 300 years? And how about variables like living in a humid vs dry area or how people store things.
Good post though.
July 18th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
Yeah, I wonder about that too. From what I’ve read, they do accelerated aging (subject the CDs to excessive heat, light, destructive gases, humidity, etc), see how long they last, and then try to extrapolate from that data to figure out how long they’d last under normal conditions.
But what are ‘normal’ conditions anyway? I guess 300 years is their estimated life under perfect storage conditions – everyone uses the most impressive numbers in their advertising! The real lifetime is probably considerably less than that.
That said, these CDs and DVDs are likely to outlive most other brands, even if you don’t get the full 300 years out of them.