Storage life time of your data
Unlike pressed original DVD/CDs, optical media has a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD. Gold-bonded DVD's do last longer 5-10 years, but cost 40 dollars each.
The problem is material oxidation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process results in the microscopic pits in the dye corroding (oxidizing) over thus blocking the holes which the laser considers an un-burned area. There is no "if" this will happen, just when.
"Many of the cheap burnable CDs available at discount stores have a max life span of around two years," And some of the better-quality discs offer a longer life span, of a maximum of five years.
Distinguishing high-quality burnable CDs from low-quality discs is difficult, because as you will notice, you will not find a lifetime value on the package.
Hard-drive disks also have their limitations, The problem with hard drives, it is not so much the disk itself as it is the disk bearing, which are basically a jewel bearing that eventually get sloppy, introducing more and more vibration. Ever heard a hard disk squeal once in a while? The disk axel has drilled through the bearing and is wobbling. With a hard-drive disk with 7,200 revolutions per minute you will have a longer life-span as they put higher quality bearing in. Of course this also does not account for dropping a drive. As a transportable medium, dropping is a reality of life.
Another factor to consider is that the larger the capacity the storage media. The more critical the need for the data to archive. Putting more and more egg's in one basket makes dropping the basket more serious. If you know that you will lose 25gigs or more on a single medium in less than 5 years. Would you knowingly use it? It is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. To make things worse, all media burned at the same time will fail at the same time. So if you made copies for safe keeping, it won't help.
MediaCorder cartridges are proven to last from 30 to 100 years. With an unproven expected life span of 300 years. That's basically several lifetimes. It is allot of effort to collect and sort 200Gigs worth of data, with MediaCorder your data will outlast you.
| Medium | MediaCorder | External Hard disk | Blu-Ray | Blu-Ray DL | HD-DVD DL | CD | DVD |
| Type | Tape- Magnetic | Hard disk - Magnetic | Optical | Optical | Optical | Optical | Optical |
| Cost (US$) | $47.00 | $160.00 | $19.95 | $47.99 | $27.99 | 0.25 | 0.75 |
| Capacity (GigaByte) | 200GB/80GB* | 200GB | 25GB | 50GB | 30GB | 0.7GB | 4.7GB |
| Price per Gigabyte | 23/58 cents | 80 cents | 80 cents | 96 cents | 93 cents | 35 cents | 15 cents |
| Archive life | 30+ yrs | 3-6 yrs | 2-5 yrs | 2-5 yrs | 2-5 yrs | 2-5 yrs | 2-5 yrs |
| Completely Rewritable | yes | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| Can read/write natively with OS (no burning software) | yes | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| Burn Failure Rate (corruption during writing) | Never fails | Never fails | unknown | unknown | unknown | 1 in 10 | 1 in 10 |
| Can withstand rough handling | yes | no | no | no | no | no | no |
Companies, in particular, need to be very concerned about the life span of their data. Otherwise, your going to wind up in a dead end. And for those sitting on terabytes of crucial data, that could be a colossal problem. Optical media burned at the same time will eventually fail at the same time without warning. ECC correction on DVD's masks the problem until too many bit errors suddenly overcome it.
