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There is some evidence to suggest that these DVDs have good archival support, and I can guarantee you that DVD readers will still be abundant 10 years from now:

http://www.mdisc.com/




I had about 1000 DVDs in storage of backed up satellite data. At one point I had to restore the backup using the DVDs and it was about ~8 years into the mission so I was worried that the data would be no good on the earliest discs.

It turned out to be totally fine, as far as I could tell. None of the early data had SHA/MD5 sums (I added this later), so there's no guarantee the earlier discs weren't somewhat corrupted, but they were definitely readable.

Back then, I had assumed they wouldn't have that long of a life, but as you seem to have found, and I discovered, once written, optical media seems to have a very long shelf life.


Most Optical Media degrades almost immediately, depending on storage environment, lasting as little as two two years before they start to degrade/aren't readable (depending on the dye and substrate). The MDISC is archival format - designed to last a minimum of 100 years when stored under reasonable conditions, and up to 1000 years if stored in archival (cool, dark) environments.

They are essential carving physical holes into a stone like substrate.

The verification tests are really quite impressive: http://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf




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