MOTM

>> More food for thought: I have to keep multiple copies of my digital
>> projects, because there's a rather limited life expectancy for a CDR, DVD,
>> or hard drive.
> Might I inquire where you get this information? I remember hearing something
> similiar in the late 80s that "CDs won't last longer than 10-15 years", but

This is all 2° hand... I've only ever had one CD go bad, and that was
because of CD rot on a commercial disc -- which is the revelation that
you're remembering; the dyes in the early runs were found to be eating away
at the CD itself... AFAIK that was resolved worldwide by the mid-90's.

But there are other issues still at play. It's impossible to produce a
consistently airtight CD, and especially to MASS produce. If you handle and
store a disc properly, the studies suggest that the average CDR will last 20
years or more. Maybe up to 200 years -- which slays hard drive storage!! But
if the disc is faulty, maybe you can expect 2-5 years before oxidation
causes irreversible damage. No-name discs that come on spindles are
particularly succeptible to this because the manufacturing quality is much
less consistent; they use lowest-cost components and older machines in
manufacturing. 

Anyway. That's what "they say." I keep my (name brand, quality) CD's away
from light, in stable temperature & humity, and am always careful when
handling them. And - knock on wood - I've lost hard drives before, but never
one of my CDR's. Unfortunately, I have thousands of gigs of material
archived, and CDR / DVD isn't really an option for all that... So I keep
multiple hard drives and transfer the data to fresh drives every few years.

Anyway, with CDR's you definitely get what you pay for, and Mitsui Gold DOES
have better longevity than Bob's Back Alley Spindles.

But the bottom line is:

NOTHING IS EVER REALLY BACKED UP UNLESS IT EXISTS IN 3 DIFFERENT PLACES!

Words to live by, learned in part from experience (big F-U Syquest!)

best,
- Scott
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