Tape vs disk cost

[Mark J Dulcey]

On 3/29/2010 7:46 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>
> What's an archival DVD?  Is that a special product?  Whenever I burn and
> test DVD's, I would estimate the best-case half-life of a DVD is about 6-12
> months.  That is ... If I burn a bunch of DVD's, then approx 6 months later,
> half of them are bad.

Archival DVDs and CDs are indeed special products that cost more (quite 
a lot more, 10x or so) than the cheap blanks. They use dyes that are 
designed for longer-term stability; the archival CDs (I don't know if 
gold DVDs are available) also use gold rather than aluminum metal layers.

My long-term results with burned DVDs (garden-variety blanks, not the 
special archival ones) have been much better than yours; my long-term 
failure rate is under 5%. I think one factor that has worked in my favor 
is that I always burn at half speed; that is, whatever the rated speed 
of the medium is, I use a burn speed of at most half that number. (But 
at least one quarter; burning at even lower speeds seems to be worse.) 
Always always verify immediately after burn, and if you get two 
consecutive failures don't use that combination of drive and blanks 
together again. But I still don't use them for things I'd be really 
heartbroken to lose.