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Re: [ARSCLIST] "Archival" DVD-R?
At 09:54 AM 8/9/2005, Jerry Hartke wrote:
>
> From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
>
> ----- I shall not respect future analyses of longevity, unless it is a
> system
> analysis, not a medium analysis. I know that it is much more expensive
> than
> leaving your discs out on your desk or in a car and monitoring the
> progressive problems. But without a drive, all we preserve are mirrors
> and/or
> optical gratings.
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
> George
One key problem is that there are no standards for drives, only for media
quality. What determines whether a drive is acceptable or not, other than
complete loss of functionality?
Jerry
Media Sciences, Inc.
Gentlemen:
Great posts this morning! Thanks.
George:
I would agree with your statement, quoted above, if modified to
reflect the ongoing commercial life of CD and DVD reading equipment.
You touch on it when you state:
> ----- I fear that you will discover that you can only trust optical media
> while the current generation of media and equipment is industrially
> supported. Say five years, to be conservative.
We have no way of predicting how long support will be manufactured
for CD and DVD, but I think it might be longer than five years. I
think there will be a huge consumer uprising if the new machines are
not backwards compatible with the old media. For example, we see
fewer and fewer standalone component CD players, but we're seeing
much of the same functionality (five discs, etc) available in
standalone DVD players that also play CDs.
I think the promise of the CD/DVD has been that it's a universal
media, that, like digital itself, can morph to a wide variety of
uses--uses way beyond what the original developers/inventors foresaw.
So, I think as long as drives that can read this media are being
manufactured, then we can say the life might be 5-10 years beyond the
end of that manufacture.
To be more positive. I have several 10+ year old CD players that
still work reliably. One is perhaps 20 years old--an early Philips. I
also have two Plextor drives that are getting beyond five years and
still seem fine (with much less use these days). I did have the power
supply in an Apex DVD player fail, and I decided to replace the
entire player, but the guy I FreeCycled the old player to is planning
on resurrecting it. He found a guy who will repair the power supply
board for $18USD (plus shipping). But I only paid $80CAD for the
replacement. He tested the drive and it was still good. He's thinking
of doing the hack to it that adds a hard disk drive. I'm glad he has
the time. This was 5 years old.
Jerry:
I know you keep saying there are no standards for the drives, but
there are standards for the discs and you include the implication
that is bad. If the frive will reproduce disks that are at the edge
of their standard tolerances, isn't that adequate standard for a
drive? IOW you make a just-in-spec disk and if the drive can read it,
the drive is OK. What am I missing here other than the difficulty of
making a just-in-spec disk.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Vignettes
Media web: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm