DVD Lifespan

[Blue Max]

I have noticed just lately that a couple of my Railway DVD's purchased around 10 years ago just will not load onto my DVD player, the same player they would load on 6 months back. I have tried them on other players and they still will not load. The DVD player is not at fault as it happily loads other DVD's.

 

Question is do DVD's have a lifespan befrore they deteriorate/degrade, I have not heard of this before though.

 

Any thoughts or feedback?

 

SteveT

[BG John]

Can't answer whether they degrade, although I think I read somewhere they might. But I buy quite a lot of second hand DVDs, so they may be some years old, and sometimes get one that's troublesome. I've started giving them a quick squirt of Isopropyl Alcohol, and a wipe with a cloth, and that seems to solve the problems so far. So some of the problem may be dirt and finger marks that have built up over the years.

 

Of course I could be totally wrong, and am actually doing more harm than good!

[SamTom]

I was told that NASA initially rated CDs at good for one year, but later decided that this figure was too optimistic, and that they did not rate DVDs for critical storage at all.

 

Delamination certainly take place sooner or later, although only ten years strikes me as being rather unlucky. I'm not sure what (if any) research findings there have yet been regarding how storage conditions affect lifespan.

 

Optical dyes also fade: this depends on frequency of viewing as well as manufacturing quality, and is further accelerated (apparently) if discs, even prerecorded ones, are played on optical readers that can write as well as read, due to the different lasers used. (A bit rough for me since I only have optical read/writers!)

 

Please note that my information is not up to date - there have been improvements in lifespan, it seems, but I couldn't say where your ten-year-olds stand. (When optical discs first came out, of course, we were told they'd last forever.)

[kevinlms]

A few years ago, a customer gave me a 3.5 floppy to copy. I put it in my PC to see if it still read it, it did. Since I was busy I took it out to 'do later'. The next day I tried the same floppy with no response, tried in a couple of drives, no good.

 

So the morale is, if it works try and do a copy ASAP, in case it later doesn't.

[Jenny Emily]

I've seen DVDs and CDs start to get moisture ingress between the layers that stops the disc being read properly. Basically, atmospheric moisture over time works its way in and stops the laser being able to read the data. It can be seen as a milky discolouration.

 

It seems more common on early DVDs - I remember taking some of the early releases back to the shop within a matter of months for a replacement - Mad Max 3 was notorious for this when first released and I went through three copies in the space of six months before I just took a refund. DVDrs and CDrs are worse than commercially pressed discs.

 

I still buy all my music on LP because they are a format with far better longevity if looked after!

[ChrisH-UK]

CDs and DVDs that are written by burning in particular have a finite life as they are mastered using a photo-chemical reaction that loses stability over time, disks that are mastered in the industrial process do not degrade in the same way and therefore have a longer life.

 

Industrial pressing normally requires large volumes of disks to be cost effective therefore certain products (such as specialised railway programmes) may be burned to high-grade writable media because it would not have enough interest for the industrial process.

[plarailfan]

The "pressed" discs seem to be the best DVD's. Some of them say "pressed" on the box sleeve / cover label.

Home made photo discs, are not likely to last a hundred years, like a carefully stored printed picture would do. Some years ago, one of my friends discovered none of the DVD players in his house could read his discs anymore and lots of various colour squares, appeared on the TV screen when he tried to view them !    

[Dr Al]

I've seen some "Model Rail Video" discs that were unplayable as they were delaminating.

 

Recordable DVDs will be more prone to poor reading as the depth of the pits burned by the laser is smaller than those on factory produced DVDs. RW discs are worse again for this.

 

It's legal to back up DVDs as far as I'm aware, so if you have the capability to do so it's worth investigating to avoid the chance of losing data.

 

Cheers,
Alan

[DavidB-AU]

This might help.

 

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html

 

Cheers

David

[jwealleans]

In a previous job I started to lead a project on examination results archival and retrieval. There was a great deal of interest from users in moving to CD storage and jukebox arrays for retrieval. I had to tell them that in order to meet the recognised criteria for archiving this material, their only option was what they already did, which was microfilm in refrigerated storage.

 

At that time the estimated lifespan of a CD was put between 5 and 10 years.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Provided - and that's a big 'provided' - that only the specified materials are used and the process is operated correctly, then a pressed CD has human lifetime or better integrity. Plenty of manufacturers did things they were not supposed to do and managed to produce CD's that failed one way or another: the biggy was corrosion of the aluminium layer so that the reflectivity fell below the minimum required, caused by such faults as an inadequate lacquer layer, pinholes in the lacquer, failure of the lacquer caused by printing incompatible dyes on top. But casualties were few - I have had about a dozen which I got replaced by warranty claims from thousands purchased -  and have thirty plus year old CD's still perfect, including one that got dropped in a road one dark wet night and was then trodden on.

 

So to pressed DVD, technically should equal CD if made to the specification because the materials compatability is proven. But it is a more demanding process and the two layer bonding requires very close process control. I have had a far higher failure incidence than with pressed CD, despite them getting less handling. The visible 'clouds' that indicate the layers debonding a good marker for a disc that isn't going to stay the course. From first noticing these 'clouds' to failure to play at some point, about two years at best in normal domestic storage. I check them at purchase and immediately reject any showing a 'cloud', easy to spot once you know.

 

Recordable optical disc of any species, who knows? Unreliable, very. Someone lucky will get fifty or more years out of them, but not likely to be you or I...

[polybear]

I think I'd better back up my Activity Media DVD's to Hard Drive......

 

polybear

[sub39h]

I think I'd better back up my Activity Media DVD's to Hard Drive......

 

polybear

 

That's exactly what I did. I'd suggest using Handbrake

[polybear]

I've just been talking about the issues surrounding DVD life & backing up methods etc. with the Videographics Wizard at work. He's had DVD's go unreadable within ten years - they definitely do have a finite life.

He suggests:

1. Keep them out of the light, away from temperature extremes (no lofts, conservatories etc.).

2. Keep back-ups. He uses at least two external HDD's, purchased from different manufacturers (if you buy two from the same manufacturer at the same time then there could be a problem that affects that particular batch).

3. Watch out for changes to software standards. He has early jpeg files that can no longer be read, simply due to the standard changing.

4. Power up HDD's regularly, not once every two years. They don't like that....

5. Keep on top of your back-ups!

 

Me? I've just purchased a WD 1TB external drive form Amazon; download Acronis for free from the WD website and automatically copy your entire PC Hard Drive to the external drive. Think what would happen if your PC HDD went u/s without warning one day....

 

HTH

polybear