It’s not uncommon for hard drives to fail after a few years.

Maintaining: If you’re seriously paranoid, you might want to transfer the data to new disks periodically, accepting the potential data degradation introduced in the transfer in order to avoid the physical degradation of the disks.

Labeling: Don’t label your disks with adhesive labels or permanent markers.

If your disk gets a bad scratch, it could be rendered completely unreadable. If text printed on a piece of paper is ripped or fades, you can still read it. Avoid touching the bottom or trying to clean them if possible.

Handling: Be sure to take good care of your disks.

Storing: Store your disks in jewel cases in a dark place at room temperature away from light and heat sources.

Burning: Burn your disks on the slowest burn speed for optimal data integrity.

Quality: Purchase the highest quality disks you can.

Here are some steps you can take to extend the life of your optical disks: Third, we’re generally time-conscious as well, so we don’t always burn our disks on the slowest, and safest, speed. Improper storage or handling leads to disc rot. Second, we don’t always store data properly.

We don’t always buy the highest quality disks to burn on. First off, most of us are probably more cost-conscious than “data-longevity conscious”. The truth is, most of our discs won’t last very long due to a plethora of factors. Most experts estimate that your CD-Rs have a conservative lifespan of 6+ years and DVD-Rs 15+ years. Manufacturers claim that their high quality CD-Rs and DVD-Rs can last between 50 and 100 years, but this is assuming you buy the most expensive disks and store them flawlessly. So what options do we ordinary folk have for backing up digital work? What steps can we take to make it more likely that our photos will be around in 10, 50, or 100 years? Optical Disks The fact is that nothing lasts forever, and the challenge is mainly how to extend the life of our data as long as possible. In general, preserving digital data is a very difficult issue, even for companies with large amounts of money and resources.

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