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The following is from a blog by David Pogue, the technology columnist for the New York Times. Thought it might be of interest...

December 10, 2008, 11:41 pm

Homemade DVD’s: Going, Going, Gone?

Jeez Louise. A conference organizer asked if I could put together a DVD loop of my funniest Web videos, to play in the registration area while attendees stand in line. No problem, I thought: I’ve got all of the original iMovie projects backed up on DVD, in clear cases, neatly arrayed in a drawer next to my desk. (My hard drive wasn’t big enough to hold those 50 videos a year.)

Guess what? On the Mac I use for video editing, most of the DVD’s were unreadable. They’re less than four years old!

Tried them on another machine. About half of them were readable.

Tried them on a MacBook that I’d been sent to review. Incredibly, mercifully, they all came through fine. I was able to rescue all those original iMovie projects and copy them onto new, bigger, cheaper hard drives.

But holy cow—how many thousands of people are backing up onto DVD, thinking that they’ll be set for at least a decade or two?

I know, of course, that home-burned DVD’s, which rely on organic dye that deteriorates with time, are nowhere near as long-lived as commercially pressed discs. But man. Four years? Scared the bejeezus out of me.

I’ve been told by experts that the gold DVD blanks can indeed last 100 years. Guess I’ll be trying that next!

Very scary post.

Care to tell us what brand a blank you've been using?

I used no-name blanks for a while, never watching my "archives" until a year later and then realizing that at least half of them had defects. This was how I learned the hard way that there is a difference between cheapo discs and discs that cost a little more.

Any chance that the brand you've been using deteriorates faster than, say, the Phillips that I love and stand by?

-JOHN

ps. And what are these gold discs?

All of this is a good argument for investing in another Casablanca HD and saving the files as AVI's instead. Maybe the HD can hang on to em longer, especially being uncompressed, huh? Or even burning the video as an AVI on a DVD, then moving it back, burning an MPG2 when necessary.

Let me ask again, what are gold discs?

Can someone link us up to a page with information and buying options?

-JOHN

Hi John
Gold discs are just a better class of blank dvd for recording on and of course you pay more.If you want something kept i still think tape is the best option.Do a Google for Gold Disc DVD anf you should come up with something.

You can get them in many more places now a days, but this is what I got a couple of years ago:

http://www.mam-a-store.com/mam43437.html

The bottom line is they use 24 karat gold for the reflective coating and different recording dye medium and bonding agents all designed for maximum lifespan.

The current estimate is 116 years for this type, but who knows.

I agree with Charles that tape is still the preferred method of archiving. Tape gives you lossless and I believe most reliable method for not much cost. Saving to hard drive is attractive but drives can go bad also and I believe the cost is still more than tape. Of course, you must ensure your tapes are protected from heat, humidity, magnetic sources, etc.

In light of the rate of technological change, I have to wonder if in 100 years we'd be able to find a DVD player, a tape player, or a computer archaic enough to hook up to a 21st century hard drive

By that time we may be able to record digital information at the molecule or atomic level. I read somewhere that if you could record at the atomic level and assigning a + or - to every atom in a one cubic centimeter piece of diamond you could record every second of your life in HD and surround sound and not even come close to filling it up.

Well, is the diamond half full or half empty