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CDs only last 2 years, IBM storage expert says
According to Kurt Gerecke, a storage expert and physicist working for IBM in Europe, a standard burned CD you pick up off the shelf is going to last you only two years, five years at the upper end of the spectrum for quality media. The CD supposedly breaks down over time, and anyone looking for a serious backup solution should consider using magnetic tape due to its longer lifespan.
"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke said in an interview this week. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."
While it's true that a standard set of tapes, stored properly, is going to last you a very long time, it's possible there may be something else behind these statements. The dye in CDs does degrade over time, but often I make use of burned CDs that are well over 8 years old, still functioning. The quality of the discs you buy and the method you use to store the discs will impact the life of the CD. He also does mention the use of hard drives as a backup-worthy medium, with bearings wearing out being the primary concern. Then again, if you are using hard drives as a backup solution, the hard drives should be stored in a safe place, not in used, and thus not being worn down. Gerecke's advice seems more applicable to businesses, though, and for just about every desktop user out there, CDs, DVDs and, at most, hard drives, are likely more than enough.
"Unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD," Gerecke said in an interview this week. "There are a few things you can do to extend the life of a burned CD, like keeping the disc in a cool, dark space, but not a whole lot more."
While it's true that a standard set of tapes, stored properly, is going to last you a very long time, it's possible there may be something else behind these statements. The dye in CDs does degrade over time, but often I make use of burned CDs that are well over 8 years old, still functioning. The quality of the discs you buy and the method you use to store the discs will impact the life of the CD. He also does mention the use of hard drives as a backup-worthy medium, with bearings wearing out being the primary concern. Then again, if you are using hard drives as a backup solution, the hard drives should be stored in a safe place, not in used, and thus not being worn down. Gerecke's advice seems more applicable to businesses, though, and for just about every desktop user out there, CDs, DVDs and, at most, hard drives, are likely more than enough.
User Comments (24)
Post a comment| PanicX on January 10, 2006 7:11 PM | Tapes reign supreme in a portable format in regards to capasity, durability and cost. My current employer uses 400Gb LTO tapes for backups, they cost under USD$30 each, which comes out to less than USD$0.08/Gb. With a 400Gb capasity only Hard Disks support more data and should you drop a hard drive, well, don't drop a hard drive. Where as CD's and DVD's are very sensitive to scratching and only hold 8Gbs at most.
BTW anyone ever see a CD shatter inside a CD-ROM? Now that'll make you jump when you're not expecting it.
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| fiziks on January 10, 2006 7:20 PM | yes, also i have had one melt in my liteon ATA DVD-R
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| nathanskywalker on January 10, 2006 8:08 PM | Wow, nice to know, honestly didn't know that. Never actually had a cd shatter myself, but have a friend who has, think he was playing a game(mabye installing) and the cd litterally just, well they heard a pop, and when they opended the drive, it kind of fell out...in pieces.
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| Kaleid on January 10, 2006 8:42 PM | I was going through all my old backup cd-r a few days ago and tried to copy a few things from those discs. Worked fine. One basic rule to follow is to keep them away from sunlight since that's a quick path for erasing data from the discs.
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| iluvnug on January 10, 2006 9:24 PM | I have experienced degrading quality in audio CD's I burned years ago. Of course, there are certain manufacturers to avoid when buying CD-R's. I have had good experience with TDK.
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| mtyson8 on January 10, 2006 9:35 PM | I would believe that. I really take care of my electronic things, and all of my burned CDs scratch, even after a month. Ones you buy at the store take at least 2 years to even start skipping, barring you take decent care of them.
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| Race on January 10, 2006 10:47 PM | I've had very good results with Sony CD-R's, with music burned 5 years ago still with no noticable degredation. I honestly wasn't aware that the lifespan was that short, but I suspect with proper care, that can be extended by a number of years.
I was thinking of transferring all of my rare Video 8 footage to disk for archive purposes. Sounds like I'd be better off leaving the footage on tape until new technology comes into play. An interesting note.........Digging through some old stuff......I found DOS 6.22 on 3 floppy disks which I've had for over 10 years, and was able to access them all with no apparent problem.
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| Per Hansson on January 10, 2006 11:00 PM | I've had no-name cd-s become unreadable. But it was mostly attributed to the top layer where you can print text (which I did not) that fell off...
Never had any brand CD's fail... But this is a known problem and I read about it on Gamecopyworld a few years ago, they had a big list of CD's tested in an aging machine...
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| Rhianntp on January 10, 2006 11:51 PM | I have lots of disks over 5 years old that work fine. I remember people saying they would last 100 years... I'm guessing the actual lifespan is around 10 years.
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| phantasm66 on January 11, 2006 1:53 AM | CDs and DVDs are crap. The future is holding all your media in a centralised media server with abundant storage.
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| Mictlantecuhtli on January 11, 2006 2:15 AM | Interesting.. I have some CDs that are over ten years old and still work fine. However, a lot of old CDs have visible oxidation. The surface hasn't peeled off though.
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| Vaerilis on January 11, 2006 2:33 AM | I have several hundred burned CDs, ranging from 10 years old discs to freshly written ones and I don't agree with Mr. Gerecke.
I've recently checked he integrity of my discs and found out that the roughly one hundred CDs bured 8-10 years ago (Kodaks, Verbatims, Philipses, and Traxdatas) were all in perfect condition, only a few dozen recently written ultra low-quality Princos and Tevions have failed over time. My point is: quality discs have a much longer lifespan than 2-5 years and low-quality "budget" discs shouldn't be used at the first place. [Edited by Vaerilis on 2006-01-11 03:33:39]
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| PanicX on January 11, 2006 3:58 AM | Originally posted by phantasm66:
CDs and DVDs are crap. The future is holding all your media in a centralised media server with abundant storage.
+redundancy Signed Department of Redundancy, Dept.
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| zachig on January 11, 2006 5:30 AM | That's interesting. I had few cheap CDs that after 2-3 years cannot be read anymore :-(. but, on the other hand, I have some high quality CDs (like Verbatim) which I own for more than 5 years and can still be read easily.
I wonder if DVD media lasts the same. Anybody knows?
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| Masque on January 11, 2006 6:00 AM | Dynamic ram will be the only fool-proof(for the most part) method for long-term storage....much like the dynamic ram drives currently being released. No moving parts and the only driver for degredation will be the silicon inside.
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| Nodsu on January 11, 2006 8:25 AM | Looking at the amount of people with bad flash drives.. I'm not eager to trust a chip for archiving purposes :P
The problem with all the storage media is the fact that they are new. Even though the magnetic tape has been around for years, the technology has improved tremendously and modern tapes are not anything like the ones from the 60s. Noone really knows what happens to anything we have today in 30 years. The only thing we have solid knowledge of, is paper. That is if you have some older kind of paper and you are using some traditional dye.. You can simulate aging all you want, but who can say your methodology is accurate enough? No one can accelerate the Time itself. If you really want to store pecious data, then you have to take care of it constantly - copy it to newer media every couple of years (keeping the old copies too). Using a storage format that allows for error recovery is a good idea.
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| otmakus on January 11, 2006 8:27 AM | Backup tapes have been there for a long time, but I've never seen anyone use it to store their personal data. 400GB for less than $30 is very cheap, but I don't think many of us will need all those terabytes of storage space (at least for now).
I think the ultimate storage will be a centralized media server, just like phant said. But the server will be in the net, and we can access the data anywhere in the world, just like we save and withdraw money in a bank. The exponentially bigger email inbox is the first step.
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| sngx1275 on January 11, 2006 9:33 AM | I'd also like to mention that I have disks that I burned in 1998 that still work. Its an audio cd rather than data, not sure if thats going to make a difference, it might if its something like an OS install disk with thousands of tiny files.
Really, I can't think of any disk that I've burned that at one time worked and later did not, aside from obvious reasons such as scratching/breaking/top layer peeling off.
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| Cartz on January 11, 2006 9:46 AM | Add me to the list of people who have had CD-R last 10 years, I burned an audio disc on my buddies single speed burner (verabatim 1x disc, cost me $14.99 for the single disc) which I listened to on my drive to work this morning, not a single skip, no visible damage to the disc.
I think the problem lies in the discs that you can see right through, the ones like verabatim with a nice thick coating on the top surface really increases the lifespan... I'm definately agreeing with those who are saying tape backup is the way to go. However, I like to have my data more easily accessible, and with 300Gb HDs within a reasonable price, I see no reason why not to just back up everything there. I only use CDs and Memory Keys when I need my data to go portable. RAID Array FTW... for reliability and redundancy.
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| MonkeyMan on January 11, 2006 10:16 AM | Well, this is useful information, and also, I'm sure that everyone would like a long lasting CD, instead of seeing scratches and skips, when you place it in a CD player. I am definately going to use this method that this posts provides, so that my CD's can have a longer lasting lifespan.
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| Vaerilis on January 11, 2006 11:25 AM | Call me cynical, but as far as I know, IBM doesn't manufacture CD-Rs, but the do manufacture magnetic tapes.
Is this in light of the opinion of the aforementioned IBM storage expert just random a coincidence?
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| Nodsu on January 11, 2006 3:34 PM | Wouldn't trust a storage server either.. If you keep your data on a computer, then all of it can be erased in a matter of seconds. No matter if it is hardware failure, human error or malice.
One central media server means that all your data is inside a single point of failure. Not to mention that you can roll a box of CDs/tapes down the stairs into the swimming pool and you will still be able to get your data back. Try that with some fancy media server 
Now, a distributed network system with good redundancy and archival functions is nice. That is if you accept a new single point of failure - your connection to the storage grid. You trust all your data to a service provider and you need an internet connection provider to access any of it.
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| Nic on January 11, 2006 5:44 PM | DVDs are even less durable than CDs. The dyes used (recording layer) seem to be less stable, and data loss resulting from surface defects is much more likely.
Buy quality media and it will last more than 2 years easily. However, most media available today is cheap and poor quality control during manufacturing means that the dyes used aren't as stable as they should be. The quality varies from batch to batch and it is hit and miss whether you get a good batch or a poor one. The more you spend, the better the chances of getting a good batch that will not deteriorate quickly. However, most consumers aren't willing to spend double the price of cheap media just to get better quality assurance. I've had CDs that have gone bad in less than a year, despite being kept in a cool dark place. I also have CDs that are more than 10 years old and still read well because a quality dye was used during manufacture. Stick to the more expensive big name brands, store your media properly, and you shouldn't have any problems.
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| mentaljedi on January 12, 2006 2:14 PM | Its interesting to know this... but i suspect "proper care" means have it in some sort of a case and not infront of a lightbulb. I mean, seriously, people these days throw CDs around like pencils. Of course the lifespan isn't long!
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