Can you trust your CD’s and DVD’s for precious data?
Here at Art House Reproductions, we take data storage very seriously. We are responsible for images belonging to artists and we take all necessary precautions to protect those images.
People seem to think that a DVD or CD is this physically solid thing that should last forever. Well folks, it just ain’t so! We’ve known for ages that CD’s had a limited life and suspected the same of DVD’s and this article helps confirm that.
Now I haven’t followed though on everything Patrick says on his Ad Terras Per Aspera blog but what he says makes sense. We have been saving images for many years starting with wedding and portrait photography images back in 1996 on Cd’s. Here at Art House Reproductions we store images on both DVD+R disks and several hard-drives, and we keep several copies for security both on and off site. we also update this information regularly, creating new disks to ensure the integrity of the files as much as humanly possible.
I would suggest to anyone concerned about the data they save to disk that they make a habit of re-burning those disks every 2-3 years to ensure that the data is safe.
