namvet said:
... geesh, I'd better start copying my 'old' image cd's tonight!! ......? ?and my music cd's ... does that mean that my bought (purchased) cd's are going to 'die' somewhere between 6-10 years?? ..... dvd's??? .... aaarrgh!! ... I'm going back to black plastic!! ...?
No, CDs can last a lot longer than 6-10 years, it all depends what you use these CDs/DVDs for. The oldest one I recorded I can still read without a problem after 18 years.
That some CDs don?t last so long has several reasons;
- Poor recording equipment
- Poor quality media. This week I had a Maxwell DVD in my hand which complete plastic layer would come lose just by bending it, go figure. Good quality is for example Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden. Stay away from cheap media.
- Wrong media. Most drives burn best with only certain media brands.
- Poor recording methods and no testing after bun. There is cheap software that can test how well your CD is burned, like CDcheck, CD/DVD Speed
- Poor storage. Considerable changes in temperatures, light, moisture, etc have a really negative effect on the life a CD/DVD. Media should also be stored vertically and dust should be avoided.
- Poor use (you should see how most people handle their CDs/DVDs)
- Wrong labels, wrong marker used
Like I said earlier, how long your media lasts has a lot to do with its purpose. I use for example CD/DVD mostly for backup/archiving, which means I don?t have to handle them that much.
Most professional music CDs can last a long time, a lot more than the 6-10 years that was mentioned earlier. It still has to be proven as for how long, but we have a large music collection with CDs close to 15 year old and each CD plays just fine. I must admit that we do handle audio CDs with care and that we store them properly.
If you really want to play it safe, then make backup copies of your original CDs, preferable 2 copies on different brand media. Then check your backup copies once a year.
You can do this with a quick test or with special programs, some of them are even free.
You can also use programs like Quickpar, ICE ECC, Dvdisaster like I do (I use Quickpar) that can save recovery information. These programs are amazing. I can have a DVD with tons of errors, with data totally lost in several locations and they?re still able to recover the original data by using an error recovery file use the amazing Reed Solomon technique. For every backup I reserve 10% in a recovery file, which means that I can always recover 10% damage, no matter where the damage is.
Most things that one has to do to protect their media are easy to follow, other issues ask for a little more time or dedication, but if you?re really serious about your computer data, songs, pictures or video, then you can come a long way to avoid any damage.
It also depends how much you care about your stuff. I have thousands of digital photographs of my family that I don?t want to lose, neither do I want to lose years of photoshopping or my complete web site designs. I?m pretty sure that the way I protected these, that I will still be able to read them after 50 years.
But to be honest; I don?t care, because in less than 10 years I have a fresh copy of them on 500GB(?) DVD purple-yellow-orange(?) ray DVDs? to decrease the number of media that I have to store.
Ask yourself if you have something you really don?t want to lose and then ask yourself how well you?ve protected yourself against disaster.
Computers is my professional expertise, maybe that explains my need to go into this much detail.
and what about my dvd's??? .... aaarrgh!! ... I'm going back to black plastic!! ... 
