More info here:

http://www.lne.fr/en/r_and_d/digital-optical-research/archiving-digital-gis-don.asp


http://spie.org/x648.html?product_id=848948

http://www.thedigitalnewsroom.com/en/News/2758/CD_DVD_and_Flash_Memory_are_unreliable_medias_.htm

http://www.thedigitalnewsroom.com/en/News/2758/CD_DVD_and_Flash_Memory_are_unreliable_medias_.htm

CD/DVD : a lifespan of 10 years ?

The Academy of Sciences and Technology will release on April 9th their report entitled "Longevity of Digital Information". First details confirm that the current storage medias are not reliable, including CD, DVD, but also Blu-Ray and Flash memory. "Some manufacturers claim that their media can retain electronic datas forever, but this is absolutely not the case" says Franck Laloë, one of the three analysts behind this report.

More density = more problems ?

He also mentions that "CD and DVD have a maximum lifespan of 15/20 years, but some of them are start to deteriorate after just a year. After 4 years, more than 8% of the CD/DVD tested are not working anymore. Time and scratches affect CD and DVD's datas of course, but even in protecting and keeping them in optimal conditions, these medias degrade. A huge quantity of personnal, medical, scientific, technic and public datas are in real danger. A periodic renewal of storage media could be a good, but expensive, solution." According to the report, hard drive disks and Flash media devices would also fail after 3/5 years, and increasing the density of media devices just keeps on increasing the problem. Blu-Ray are then more fragile than DVD, which are more fragile than CD...