Hey Fred, you are right on the money in regards to the standard. Yeah, I
know the standards for commercial music cd's are different from data
cd-rom disks or cd-r's. 

I wasn't suggesting that we should all store things on hard media and
expect it to be permanent, only that the manufacturers are very
conservative in expressing how long a cd of any type will last and that
my music cd's are some evidence of that. Beyond that simple comparison,
you can't draw any other conclusions from music cd's and extrapolate
that to data. Sorry I wasn't more clear. Also the error correction used
on data cd's is quite different from music cd's and the hardware that
plays them.

Great amounts of deterioration in music quality are apparently
acceptable to the majority of listeners, otherwise the iPod wouldn't be
so popular. Nor do most people think they are missing something by
downloading music at the lowest possible bit rate, but I would. I
remember music records, still have some high quality imported (as in
from another country, not from a database) records, and still have a
turntable to play them. 

In my experience with cd-rom and cd-r cd's the information has become
obsolete before the data was unreadable, so for some purposes, we use
them extensively. I have never seen a delaminated cd or dvd either at
home or at work, except in pictures. So I know it can happen, but it
must be infrequent.

This issue came up recently. In order to store a video "permanently", we
took a two level approach. We stored the recording on a dvd-rw for ease
of access in the shorter term, and we also stored it on redundant
servers in two different physical locations that are continually backed
up. So I think we are good to go.  Of course, I also know that 20 years
from now very few people will care that this event is documented except
as a curiosity, since many of the participants will be retired or....
Just a reminder that when someone asks you to store something
permanently, you/they should make an assessment of what that really
means.

Bill Creamer
Records & Conflicts
NY, NY 10019


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