Guide to Digital Preservation from NIST

[BJ_M]

Guide to Digital Preservation from NIST


http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/24/0054242

Little Hamster writes "The scientists working on the Digital
Preservation Program at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) has released an excellent 50 page guide
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

on care and handling of CDs and DVDs for long
term storage. It talks about the effects of light, moisture,
radiation, scratches, marking, adhesive labels, and even
playback on the discs. For those slashdotters not familiar with
the physical make up of these optical discs, there is a very
nice chapter explaining all the background. And if you only
want to know how to care for your precious data, there is a one
page summary

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/onepage.pdf

And yes, they agreed that glued-on labels are harmful.

[The village idiot]

Cool, thanks.

[gmatov]

BJ_M,

This quote tells me the link is to a BS site, bought and paid for,

"consensus that, under recommended storage conditions, CD-R,
DVD-R, and DVD+R discs should have a life expectancy of 100 to
200 years or more; CD-RW, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM
discs should have a life expectancy of 25 years or more."

Here's an oxymoron; Never in a thousand years would I believe they will last 100 years. (As an aside, if they are not RicohJPN, or Taiyo Yuden, they might not be any good tomorrow.)

Cheers,

George

Hey, although the sum total of human knowledge might be out there, you still can't take everything at face value.

[The village idiot]

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

Is that your only beef with this report? In the other post you made it sound like the whole thing was tripe. Other than the obvious difficulties with long term life testing, it seemed to be a fairly accurate report. Not only does it go into how to store them, but a simple description of how they are constructed. Both of those details are fairly import to everyone here that doesn't want to get into the real technical nitty-gritty of how the disks are built. All in all, I thought it was a decent report, and that's why I linked it. And of course bad construction can yield disks with a lifetime of only hours. I've had disks that have only been good for a few hours, and I'll never buy those again. To my knowledge, no independant lab, privately funded or paid buy the manufacturers, has done any real testing on the accellerated aging testing of disks. I heard somepeople talk about it, but have yet to find a link to the testing data. I do think the Wilhelm Institute is working out some testing techniques, but not there as yet. And again that will be accellerated testing, so who knows what the real world will bring. And in that article they did mention several times, that the affects of this or that are unknown but could lead to "premature" data failure. Again, I thought it was a pretty fair article, and also mostly current (within the last few years). If you take out all life expectancy figures, it is agood document on how to keep your disks in good shape. I especially like the part about not sitting on the disks, since it could cause them to flex and become damaged. They had to say that?

Also please remember that many government reports are slanted in favor of the money trail. And rely on data from the manufacturers to compose the reports, and what manufacturer is going to say "yes we designed that disk to last for an Eon, but in actual use you would be lucky to get 5 hours out of it". Five hours is the minimum life I have ever received from a CDR that actually completed a burn, most of that pack lasted for about 6 days, and some were still working after more than a month, but no longer work now. Those were the first generation of Memorex BLACK CDRs, I've also had problems with some of the "Cool Colors" disks too. But enough of that since now I have strayed off topic. Oh mighty moderators, please don't beat me

[gmatov]

Village,

You think saying not to sit on it a dumb warning? You go to www.dumbwarnings.com and you'll think it is the height of intelligence by comparison.

No, I don't have that many problems with the report, other than the longevity thing. I've written before that I don't believe a hell of a lot of what these testing houses say. 9 out of 10 studies are commissioned by the makers of the product being studied, paid for by their "Association" or whatever they call their club, even when it is supposedly "sponsored by the US Gov.

The technical stuff would have been more interesting if it hadn't already been covered in the CDinfo and DVDRinfo, or whatever the site is, that is about 50 pages of answers to FAQs. Very good site there, will put a link in a message when I find it again.

That, BTW, is the source of my comment a couple times that the life of a disk is 100 years or more, but the SHELF life of an unopened pack of new media is 7 years. Hell, after subjecting the bastard to laser fire for up to an hour, it's gonna last a 100 years, but you put it in a nice cool, dark place, it'll only last 7. Maybe paranoia is setting in again and they want you to get rid of them. Can't make money on what you don't sell.

BTW, did you know the USGov actually did do a study on shelf life of medicines that the Mil. Services stock, which they threw away and rebought every year ( MFG said loses potency after 1 year ) and found that Viet Nam war era drugs were still at full potency? 14 billion bucks (goofy number pulled out of the air for dramatic effect ) a year of drugs thrown out, repurchased. Bet some over zealous scientist got his ass reamed for doing that study.

But I'm paranoid, so don't pay no never mind.

Cheers,

George

[BJ_M]

should have bought thier drugs in canada as a lot of states now do and saved a pile of dough ...

[gmatov]

BJ,

And the drug czars are trying their damnedest to get the Feds to outlaw that. "We can't guarantee the quality of Canadian drugs." Hell, we sold the Canadians the drugs, but crossing the border both ways makes them unsafe. Going north doesn't hurt them, but comin' back south, "They might not be any good.".

And the druggies are threatening to cut you off if you don't stop selling them back.

Hell, what do you expect of a government that writes a Medicare bill that specifically forbids the largest drug buying entity in the world from dickering with the druggies for a better price, as the Canadian, and every other gov in the world has?

Paranoia, again, the plot to bankrupt Social Security to make the peons put their money into the stock market. And I don't know why I put smileys, here. Can't find a "sick to my stomach" one.

Cheers,

George

Not political. Every gov is run by the elite and rich FOR the elite and rich since the beginning of time. If that means Adam and Eve to you, OK, but Adam was boss. If you think we became man from something earlier, soon as Oog learned to wield a club, Zug had to pick ticks off him. Ain't gonna ger any better, either.

[Fandim]

gmatov - this is because after it's shelf life, you risk the ink losing some of it's properties, and not being able to be burned correctly. (Supposedly). However, once burned, they have a lifespan of 100ish years. (Again, supposedly).