Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

I consider CDRs to be the most reliable medium for long term
storage. I have had a number of hard drive crashes and I have seen
badly shedding tape. I have even seen vinyl LPs (Yes, I'm that old)
with mold growing on the surface. I have never had a CDR or CD
failure. I may eventually develop the same level of trust for DVDs
and DVDRs but not just yet.

As many of you probably know I run a commercial recording studio
based around ProTools. After every session I backup every new track
and the master files to CDR and insist that my client take it home
and keep it. (I do charge them for this service.) I also copy
everything to a second, slower harddrive I keep for the purpose of
running backups. So the data exists in three places. After clients
have finished their projects I make a CDR copy of everything for
safekeeping in the studio, in addition to the CDR copy the client
should be keeping. After verifying that the data on the CDR is
intact I then erase my ProTools hard drive and my running backup
harddrive. So all active projects exist in three places and all non-
active projects in two places. I keep the CDRs stored in jewel
boxes in a climate controlled storage area of the studio which is
usually dark and has no windows. I have several thousand.

I have seen too many drive failures to keep everything archived on
hard drives. If you drop a CDR it is likely to still be readable.
CDRs are immune to magnetic fields. It may be possible to damage
them with UV but if you keep them out of the sun and bright lights
there should be no problem.

I use a combination of cheap spindle mounted blanks (but major name
branded) and expensive gold discs (usually Apogee or Quantegy)