[ale] DVD life expectancy

[Greg Freemyer]

On 5/22/05, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks James.
> 
> I see that my 5 year old CDs are good for between 0 and 95 more years.
> I guess I'll know more tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after
> that, etc.  :-)
> 
> How and the world can they determine that the lifespan of a CD is
> between 5 - 100 years.  I think I would have more confidence in them if
> they just said "We don't really know".
> 
> -Jim P.

I didn't read the article and based on the above 5-100 years comment,
I'm not inclined to.

I don't know anything about burned DVDs, but I've heard lots of horror
stories about burned CDs.  I would not want to really on them more
than 12 months!!!!

What I've heard is that the glue on the back of most printable CD
labels is corrosive.  glue eats away at the CD and around the 18 month
point CDs start seperating into half.

So you get longer lifetimes if you use a sharpie to label your disks. 
Unfortunately even a sharpie is corrusive.  The best choice is
supposedely a marker made specifically for CD markin, but I've only
heard that comment from one person..

Greg
-- 
Greg Freemyer
The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century