imacgirl; In a recent Elements class the instructor touched on this subject.I was very surprised to learn of the short lifespan of CD-Rs.He mentioned the Verbatim Datalife Plus as being far superior to what is generally available.You mentioned Verbatim in a previous post.Same product? Lou
Yes, I use Verbatim DataLife DVD-R’s. Here’s <http://www.verbatim.com> a link to their site, take a look at the Products. Apple had recommended this brand to me as a good brand to use…time will tell.
In 50 years, CDs and DVDs will probably have gone the way of the floppy disks 🙂 Many of the newer computers don’t even come with FD drives any longer, except as a special-order peripheral, so anything saved to a floppy can’t be read in those new computers. I’d recommend re-archiving important pictures to whatever is the latest advancement in storage media as time goes by. It’s funny, I still enjoy looking at family photos that are over 100 years old and that are still as sharp as the day the prints were made. I wonder sometimes if we’re really improving.
imacgirl; In a recent Elements class the instructor touched on this subject.I was very surprised to learn of the short lifespan of CD-Rs.He mentioned the Verbatim Datalife Plus as being far superior to what is generally available.You mentioned Verbatim in a previous post.Same product? Lou
I found it more enlightening to fast forward to their conclusions at the end of the article 🙂 You can figure on anything from 100 to 217 years according to them.
Marilyn, it’s all in how you look at it I guess. Sometimes I’d like to revert back to the horse and buggy. Other times I’m amazed at what can be accomplished with a simple click. Elements has indeed made me lazy. It used to take me hours/days/weeks to finish a painting….now I can throw one together with a few clicks. Is this an improvement ? Heck if i know. I guess we have to take advantage of the new stuff but not forget the old ( or forget ‘how’ to do the old ) It comes in handy now ( computer art ) because I don’t have to worry about cleaning up messy paint and brushes or worry about paint drying on my canvas while i chase after a kid. I’m thinking one day I will revert back to the ‘old fashioned paint and canvas’…but it wont be any time soon…when i’m old and grey perhaps. They should still be selling canvas and paint then 😉 I’m rambling
You know, we’ve had this discussion more than once and I remember about 9 months or so ago someone pointed out that good quality prints have the potential to last 100 years or more. For me at least it’s not so much longevity, although that would be nice too, but organization that pushes me to record my families images digitally. I’m in the midst of a massive genealogy/arc hiving project and have come across boxes of pictures moldering away in basements as well as hundreds of photo’s being degraded and destroyed because they were put in those awful 70’s "magnetic" photo albums. Organizing and preserving all these memories is what drives me. I also have plenty of family members who I need to distribute this stuff to. Prints and re prints just aren’t an option when your talking quantity.
So, I’m left with digital (poor me 😉 ). I accept that I’m going to have to continually be moving my images to the next "permanent" media that comes along. I’d just like it if it would last more than 3 years for crying out loud!
Marilyn makes a good point, and it’s one I’ve thought about a lot. I’m working on a family photo archive…currently have about 4500 images, about half from old 35mm slides and negs. I still have a ton of prints to scan, some from the 19th century! Here’s my thinking on archival storage. It’s worth at least as much as you are paying for it! As Marilyn says, floppies are history. CR-Rs will be history soon, and DVD’s will follow them. If you are archiving images to CD-Rs today, you have to be ready to migrate to a new medium within the next…I would say five years. DVD’s, probably ten years. I currently have about 150 CD-Rs backing up my image library. My plan is to skip the current DVD technology and go to "DVD Blues" which should be out in a year or two. They hold about 30 Gigabytes, vs. the 5.7GB capacity of a DVD or 700MB CD-R. I expect to continue to migrate my photo archive to new media as they mature. Ok, so how important is archival life of CD’s? For me, not very. If they last three or four years, that’s probably sufficient. I’ve heard horror stories that some of the cheapies can lose data in shorter intervals. Dunno if it’s true. I have spot-checked mine, and have not found a single instance of a corrupted file yet, and I’m using "cheapies." GQ label, 50 for $7. I recently bought some Memorex "Blacks." They seem to be OK too. The bottom line is, long-term storage life is probably not that important. The medium will be obsolete before you’ll lose data, and you’ll be moving it all to the next "standard" storage medium anyway. Bert
No argument from me on the value of archiving photos to CDs or DVDs. I think of it every time I have to dig down through multiple photo albums looking for a particular picture. My biggest problem, now that I have Elements, is always wanting to "improve" each picture as I scan it 🙂 Consequently, it’s taking me forever to get my pictures archived.
Keeping a set of "archive" CD’s off site is also a wonderful way to protect those irreplaceable photos should a disaster occur. And you can’t beat computer technology for genealogy purposes.
Between my office and my home, I spend half my life on a computer. I love them. Still, there’s something wonderful about touching those old photos . . . 🙂
My biggest problem, now that I have Elements, is always wanting to "improve" each picture as I scan it Consequently, it’s taking me forever to get my pictures archived
Marilyn,If I may make a suggestion…archive your images in their raw, unimproved state! Techniques and tools will probably improve in the future…you might make some irreversible changes to those images and regret it in a few years! You can also archive your improved versions, but those originals are your Mother Lode! Bert
Bert – I always work on a copy of the original (but that’s a good point–I guess I should have mentioned that), but I still have the problem of wanting to create and fix that copy following each scan 🙂
Thanks All: Consensus seems to be– Cd’s Ok for now,but be prepared to move archives to different media as they become available.Sounds reasonable. I know this was discussed before,but it was a jolt to recently hear an Elements instructor say that we can expect significant deterioration in 3 to 4 months.Bunk?
I think it’s mostly bunk. I can accept deterioration, but I’ve got CDs I burned a couple of years ago that are still fine. I suppose some of this could be dependent on variables like media and the number of times a CD is opened and closed. This isn’t my strong suit, but I do think 3 to 4 months is a little exaggerated.
Well, maybe if you live in Phoenix and leave them on the front seat of your car with the windows closed around noon in July, you might have a problem. As Beth says, I have about 150 that I have burned over the last year or so. I haven’t checked them all, but I have pulled some out occasionally to get an original image…haven’t seen a problem yet, and I used cheapies…something I sorta regret now. When I started there wasn’t much discussion of CD problems…or if there was, I didn’t know about it. If they last three or four years, I’ll be happy. By then, I’ll be using CD-Blues or something beyond that. Bert
Thanks Beth and Bert– Sounded like bunk to me too,but wanted to rely on folks with far more experience than I. I ALWAYS find good opinions here.Best learning spot I’ve found– really friendly too.
I have CDs that I burned 7 years ago and they’re still working just fine. However, I avoid no-names, I always used either Maxell, Kodak, Sony or Verbatim’s.
My biggest problem, now that I have Elements, is always wanting to "improve" each picture as I scan it Consequently, it’s taking me forever to get my pictures archived
Marilyn,If I may make a suggestion…archive your images in their raw, unimproved state! Techniques and tools will probably improve in the future…you might make some irreversible changes to those images and regret it in a few years! You can also archive your improved versions, but those originals are your Mother Lode! Bert
CD-Rs seem to be failing in a couple of years////Do research on testing.
Well, maybe if you live in Phoenix and leave them on the front seat of
your car with the windows closed around noon in July, you might have a problem.
As Beth says, I have about 150 that I have burned over the last year or
so. I haven’t checked them all, but I have pulled some out occasionally to get an original image…haven’t seen a problem yet, and I used cheapies…something I sorta regret now. When I started there wasn’t much discussion of CD problems…or if there was, I didn’t know about it. If they last three or four years, I’ll be happy. By then, I’ll be using CD-Blues or something beyond that.
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