RE: [AV Media Matters] Incubation services search

[Joseph Wrobel <joseph.wrobel@kodak.com>]

Charles,

I don't recall Kodak ever doing pollutant exposure testing of CD-R media,
other than with things like coffee spills or greasy fingers.  Four reasons
come to mind.

First, most of our experience has been with gold.  In a gold disc, the only
component you worry about interacting with a polluted environment is the
dye, and it's sitting there between an impermeable metal film and 1.2 mm of
polycarbonate.  Those are substantial barriers to environmental gases.
Granted, with silver, it's different.

Second, in our experience, it's way down the list of ways consumers can
lose their data.  We worried primarily about light exposure (which is why
we chose a phthalocyanine dye over 10 years ago and still use it today) and
handling (which is why we invented the Infoguard protection system).

Third, when talking to archivists, we primarily heard concerns about data
longevity in a controlled environment.  Who maintains an archive with high
levels of pollutants?  So, we did an extensive Arrhenius study to estimate
lifetime in that environment.

Fourth, what would it prove?  After all the effort that went into our
lifetime estimation work, I read over-and-over that it's just marketing
hype, that it's not credible, yada yada yada.  If we came back with data
that said our media could be boiled in a mixture of liquid sulfur and
nitrogen oxides, I'm sure I'd hear that unless it was done by a third
party, it's not believable.

So I guess the question is, have you ever done any testing of CD-R media
for exposure to sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other common air
pollutants?  That might carry some weight.

Joe Wrobel
Eastman Kodak Company

Charles Repka <Charles.P.Repka@abc.com> on 03/08/2001 03:24:59 PM

>Please respond to AV-Media-Matters@topica.com
>
>To:   AV Media Matters <AV-Media-Matters@topica.com>
>cc:    (bcc: Joseph J. Wrobel/595090/EKC)
>Subject:  RE: [AV Media Matters] Incubation services search
>
>I can't answer your question but I have a question of my own.  Does Kodak (
>and other manufacturers ) to any other kind of testing beside humidity and
>temperature?  Do they test for exposure to Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen oxides
>and other common air pollutants?
>
>Charles Repka