Optical media can rot in as short a time as magnetic media

[Commie_User]

It's obvious to me why this is just an open secret. After all, if each new wonder format isn't touted as indestructable, or lasting ' a lifetime', people are going to feel 'Bilked'. Indeed, if the last wonder format was also indestructable, the new one should be too. And so the lies continue, resulting in much lost data.

http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/gallery ... ageindex=2


Mind you, for a myth-busting roundup, Microsoft themselves could at be a bit more specific. Because modern pressed discs don't go brown and deterioriate by the end of a decade any more, it's usually just self-recorded discs which can become unreadable in a shockingly short time (especially now when more are imperfectly manufactured). That's what I found and which is why perhaps 1/2 - 3/4 of all my recorded data discs are copies of backups made before.

But, in the end, many discs die before their time because people treat them like sh*t. Now I wonder where THAT idea came from? Surely it can't be from people in the know, like corporate admen and presenters of BBC tv's Tomorrow's World?!