09 Dec 2003, 13:04, CHARLES ANGELICH (1:123/140), wrote to PASCAL SCHMIDT:

Hi CHARLES.

 CA> What I've been reading lately tells me that even burning image
 CA> copies to CDs is not foolproof indefinitely. I don't see as
 CA> much effort being put into securing copies beyond a few years
 CA> and that worries me. Data can be useful for more than a few
 CA> years and my source code is valuable (to me) as a reference if
 CA> nothing else. 

Saturday I was cutting up some 'replacement CD washers' and was thinking of
my previous discussion on CDs in the sunlight, and how brittle and flaky
the ones I was presently trying to cut were.  It was almost like trying to
cut 'Plexiglas' with a hatchet, they just crazed and cracked randomly every
which way.  I had a few DVDs in the pile and tried cutting those instead. 
To my suprise, they separated easily into two extremely flexible layers of
about equal thickness.  My _guess_ is that the data layer was in the
center, but there was nothing as obvious as the CD data layer.   ????

Just yesterday I got a commercial Ad., thought about this conversation, and
captured part of the ad: 

   ----- 100YEAR.TXT begins -----
Prodisc 2X 4.7 GB Silver DVD-R Media, NO Stack Ring!

Top Surface: Silver Unbranded; Recording Surface: Purple

Features:
Secure Unalterable Data 
Superior Recording Layer Technology 
Random Access Data Retrieval 
100 Year Archival Life Applications 
Multimedia Presentations (Audio, Video & Data) 
Testing & Development 
Large File Storage 
Data Transfer 
Long Term Archival Storage

   ----- 100YEAR.TXT ends -----

If the CD people aren't think about "long term", at least the DVD
people seem to be!

Just for whatever it's worth!


     Good luck...  M.  

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)