Kevin McElhone asks, "What does this say about digital music storage
in the future?"  Peter Nielson says, "In short, the CD you burn on
your home PC relies on changes to a dye to record the information.
Over time, only two to five years, the dye can die."

The concern about archival quality of computer media is one that keeps
emerging from time to time.  I share this concern as I commit my roll
scan files to CDs.  Not knowing what kind of life to be expected from
CDs, I have been burning multiple copies and sharing them with
interested people, as a form of backup.  Assuming they are not converted
to some other format in the unforeseeable future, I would expect they
would eventually become unreadable.

My own computer is equipped with a combo 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drive,
as I have many 5.25" floppy disks going back to the early 1980s.
So far, all have been readable as I convert them to contemporary DVDs.
I'm now doing the same conversions from my CD roll scan library over
to DVD.

This begs the question:  If CDs are showing signs of relatively short
life span, seemingly much shorter than perceived only a few short years
ago, do DVDs have anything going for them that suggest they may have
a longer life?

Regards,

Terry Smythe
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
http://members.shaw.ca/smythe/rebirth.htm