OT-CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Quite an interesting article here that everyone should read if you want to preserve your DS (and other) DVDs and CDs for as long as possible:

CDs and DVDs Not So Immortal After All

[Gothick]

Thanks for that link.  I've read reports about the "rot" or "decay" to which discs are heir several times over the past years.  The first articles that I read about this issue with CDs actually appeared in the late 1980s, as I recall.

Fans of DS are fortunate because of how long MPI has kept the series in print.  (Clearly, they aren't losing any money on the show, so their motives could hardly be altruistic, but still, I think we're lucky they're so committed to it.)  A couple weeks ago I had lunch with a friend who's a diehard media collector and he spoke about the rate at which CDs, DVDs and related media (such as VHS) go in and out of print.  It's pretty shocking.

G.

[Josette]

There has been some discussion of this on the WordPerfect forum and that disks might not be safe for long-term storage and tips for how to care for them.

I asked one time about the commercial disks and and whether the same problems would affect music or softward CDs.  I forget the explanation, but it seemed that the process used to make them was different and so they would last longer.  This implies that's not true.