durable CD's ?

From
Date
Michael J. Styzen wrote:
>As an avid collector of music CDs I have some disappoining news for
those who have illusions of permanent storage on CD.  I have some CDs
that are about 10 years old and some are begining to deteriorate beyond
the point of playability.  I'm affraid true durability will have to
wait on technology.<

Yes, this problem was noticed and solutions were found. Modern CDs have a
different coating to avoid this problem. I have talked to a material
scientist recently who said this new coating will be as durable as paper.
He said, for the lawyers, they assume a lifetime of 30 years. If they are
wrong, however, it will be easy and cheap to transfer this data to other
media.

Our ETH librarians say microfiches are the most durable of all known media.
Hence, we should only accept journals on microfiches.

Heinz Hilbrecht




Address:

Heinz Hilbrecht
Geological Institute
ETH Zentrum
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