How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

(Last updated January 11th 2013)

Translations: Serbo-Croatian by Jovana Milutinovich

Ahh, I’ve been planning to write this one for awhile: an entire article on archival quality media. As I do professional software development as well as professional photography (what a weird combination), I need archival quality CD and DVD media to store my data on.

However, one of the hardest things to is actually find good media, or even understand why it is good media. This article focuses on the history of Compact Discs, writable CD/DVD media, and why DVD+R is superior to DVD-R. If you want to just know what media is worth buying, skip to the summary at the bottom.

Short history of the Compact Disc
The invention of the Compact Disc has had a large impact on both music and computing in the last 20 years. Invented in 1979 as a joint project between Sony and Philips to counter the self-destructive nature of consumer audio playback (such as tapes and records that could only be played so many times before the recording degraded significantly) by switching to a resilient digital format.

The CD was also designed to store standard computer data, as in 1985 the first CD drives for computers were released; massive, bulky, and expensive, it was not until the mid-90s that they really took off, driven almost solely by video games and large multimedia applications.

In 1990, Sony and Philips went back to the drawing table, and then came out with the CD-R, a record-once medium. Yet again, the first CD burners were large, expensive, and bulky, but by the late 90s having a CD burner was the new ‘in’.

The first few generations of CD media, designed by Taiyo Yuden (a company who I respect, and buy all my archival quality media from), actually kind of sucked; it wasn’t until around 2000 that companies started producing very high end media.

CDs and DVDs store individual bits (encoded in various ways depending on the media) with spots of reflective and non-reflective areas. This method is called ‘pits and lands’, where pits ‘absorb’ light (ie, are ‘off’ bits) and lands ‘reflect’ light (ie, are ‘on’ bits).

With pressed media, the pressing method causes pits to reflect the laser’s light away from the sensor, and the lands to reflect it back at the sensor. With burned media, a high energy laser causes spots of organic dye to go opaque and obscure the reflective surface for the pits, leaving the organic dye for lands alone.

Short history of the DVD
While burning was becoming popular in the late 90s, so was playing high quality video on DVDs. Storing almost 7 times the data of a 700MB CD (or almost 13 in the case of dual layer DVDs), allowed companies to store massive amounts of data on one disc, leading to the movie industry to drop VHS tapes and the video game industry to drop CDs.

In 1995, the first DVD specification was ratified by over a dozen companies including Sony and Philips, as well as Thompson, Pioneer, and Mitsubishi. By 2000, at least half the homes in the US and Japan had DVD players.

So, obviously, the next step was to produce burnable DVDs. Two separate, and incompatible, efforts took hold. The first one, Pioneer’s DVD-R (pronounced ‘DVD dash R’) was released in 1997, using different data storage methods than pressed DVDs (appearing to be more like CD-R than DVD), a poor error correction scheme, and the ‘wobble’ laser tracking system of DVD-R is inadequate for the job.

The second effort, lead by the DVD+RW Alliance (headed by Sony, Philips, Mitsubishi, and Thompson) was released in 2002, as an alternative to the poorly implemented DVD-R. DVD+R uses a superior ‘wobble’ laser tracking system, a far better error correction method, and the media quality itself is typically higher. (See the ‘Why DVD+R?’ section below for a more technical explanation)

Why archival media is hard to produce
Unlike pressed CDs/DVDs, ‘burnt’ CDs/DVDs can eventually ‘fade’, due to five things that effect the quality of CD media: Sealing method, reflective layer, organic dye makeup, where it was manufactured, and your storage practices (please keep all media out of direct sunlight, in a nice cool dry dark place, in acid-free plastic containers; this will triple the lifetime of any media).

The silver and aluminum alloys used in virtually all blank CD/DVD media has one major issue, requiring the manufacturer to lacquer a protective seal over the entire disc: silver and aluminum oxidize when they hit air, turning the normally reflective layer into silver or aluminum rust. Some (very expensive) media uses gold instead which doesn’t oxidize, however DVD media cannot use gold due to design issues (not true anymore, see update 1 below). Today, only the cheapest of the cheap media has severe issues with sealing practices (as such, avoid any media made outside of Japan and Taiwan; especially avoid media made in India).

Assuming that the protective seal and reflective layer are manufactured correctly, the next issue is the organic dye. The first organic dyes, designed by Taiyo Yuden, were Cyanine-based and, under normal conditions, had a shelf life of around ten years; simply, that was simply unacceptable for archive discs. Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Mitsui Co., and Ciba Specialty Chemicals spent the next ten years trying to produce the best organic dyes, eventually reaching archive-quality CD media.

Taiyo Yuden produced ‘Super Cyanine’, a chemically stabilized version of the original Cyanine dye designs, while TDK offers media that uses ‘metal-stabilized Cyanine’ dye, leading to similar shelf lives as Taiyo Yuden’s media. Taiyo Yuden states their Super Cyanine dye is chemically stable for at least 70 years, and TDK states their metal-stabilized Cyanine is also stable for 70 years.

On the other hand, Mitsubishi went in a different direction and produced what is called a Metal Azo dye, that they claim is stable for around 100 years. Azo dyes are chemically stable, however, the shelf life of media using Azo dyes typically does not exceed that of Super Cyanine and metal-stabilized Cyanine.

The third dye produced for CD media is called Phthalocyanine dye, with the majority of such dyes produced by Mitsui and Ciba. Typically marketed as more resistant to heat and UV radiation than Cyanine and Azo, modern Cyanine and Azo dyes last just as long in extreme conditions.

DVDs also use similar dyes, however manufacturers have intentionally kept what dyes they use a secret (instead of a feature in their marketing of the media), and all blank DVDs are intentionally the same color (as different dyes on CDs make blanks different colors, however, it is not indicative of what dye is used due to some manufacturers using different colored silver alloys and non-reactive additives in the dye).

Why Taiyo Yuden media, and how to buy in the US
The best discs in circulation tend to be Taiyo Yuden media. In Japan, you find their media under the brand That’s, which are wholly owned by Taiyo Yuden.

As of late 2009, Taiyo Yuden announced they were buying the JVC Advanced Media brand, and making it a wholly owned and operated brand for TY products. They did this to put Taiyo Yuden products on store shelves worldwide. See update 4 at the bottom for a full explanation.

Simply put, I have never had problems with any kind of Taiyo Yuden media. Ever. I have bought CDs and DVDs under a dozen different brands (including non-Taiyo Yuden manufactured TDK and Verbatim), and the only ones that have had a 100% success rate is Taiyo Yuden.

If you cannot find any company selling media under the Taiyo Yuden/JVC Advanced Media brand, I suggest buying from the SuperMediaStore.com, who offer a wide range of Taiyo Yuden CD media, DVD-R media, and DVD+R media. I tend to buy just from them, as they are the only company that guarantees that their media is actually from Taiyo Yuden and not a fake (see the above linked FAQ on information about fake Taiyo Yuden media).

Why DVD+R?
This is the most technical section of the article. If you don’t understand the basics of how CD/DVD media works, or find such technical discussions boring, skip to the next section.

As I said earlier, DVD-R sucks for data preservation for three reasons: inferior error correction, inferior ‘wobble’ tracking, and the fact its data writing methods look like an un-needed halfway point between CD-R and DVD+R. The wobble tracking I shall explain first, then the error corrections method, then the specifics of ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP optimum power settings.

For a CD/DVD burner to track where it is on the disc, it uses three things: the ‘wobble’ of the data track (where it actually wobbles back and forth instead of in a straight line) to tell where it is in the track, the position of the track to tell where it is on the disc, and some additional information on the disc to tell where the track (singular, as CDs and DVDs only have one track, and it is written in a concentric spiral) begins and ends.

This additional information on a CD-R is called the ATIP (Absolute Time In Pregroove), which contains how long the track is, where it begins, what the maximum and minimum writing speeds are, what formula dye it uses, who actually made it, optimum power control settings, and error correction data. The ATIP is stored as a frequency modulation in the wobble itself.

However, since the wobble changes subtly to encode data, it is impossible to use with the small size of tracks DVD requires, as electric noise in the laser pickup and wobbles introduced by the electric motor spinning the disc, these could easily be read as frequency changes in the real track itself.

On DVD-R, they tried to solve the problem with something called ‘pre-pits’ where spikes in the amplitude of the wobble appear due to pits fully out of phase with the rest of the track (ie, between two spirals of the track, where there is no data). This can be viewed as a simple improvement over CD-R as it makes it easier to track the wobble (since the wobble is constant except for the easy to detect and remove spikes).

Unfortunately, this method as one flaw: due to electric noise in the laser pickup, it would be very easy to miss the pre-pit (or read one that wasn’t actually there) if the disc were damaged or spun at fast speeds. The time to read a pre-pit is 1T (roughly .0000000038th of a second), which even for a computer can be easy to miss. DVD-R traded hard to track frequency changes for hard to read wobble-encoded data.

On a DVD+R, however, they came up with a much better method. Instead of changing the frequency of the wobble, or causing amplitude spikes in the wobble, they use complete phase changes. Where CD-R’s and DVD-R’s methods make you choose between either easy wobble tracking or easy ATIP reading, DVD+R’s method makes it very easy to track the wobble, and also very easy to encode data into the wobble. DVD+R’s method is called ADIP (ADdress In Pre-groove), which uses a phase change method.

With ADIPs’ phase changes, the direction of the wobble changes and continues on going in the exact opposite direction (ie, counter-clockwise to clockwise, or the reverse). For example, if the wobble was ‘going up’, the phase change causes it to instantly reverse direction start ‘going down’ no matter where it in the wobble cycle. The phase change is very easy to detect, and also continues for a set period (in this case, one 32T section of the track, or 32 times longer than the pre-pit method of DVD-R).

The state of the phase change (clockwise or counter-clockwise) encodes the individual bits in each block In essence, with the phase change method, not only do you have an easy way of tracking the wobble, but you now have an easy way of reading wobble-encoded data.

As I mentioned earlier, this wobble-encoded data includes error correction of wobble-encoded data itself. Error correction is the most important part of media, because if it does not work, then you’ve lost your data, even if there is nothing seriously wrong with the disc.

The DVD-R specification states that for every 192 bits, 64 of them are not protected under any scheme, 24 of them are protected by 24 bits of parity, and the last 56 bits are protected by another 24 bits of parity. This weird (to put it mildly) scheme allows you to easily scramble or lose 25% of the data that is required to read your disk! This information is almost more important than the actual data burned on the disc itself.

The DVD+R specification, however, states that for every 204 bits of information, it is split into four blocks of 52 bits containing 1 sync bit to prevent misreading because of phase changes, 31 bits of data, and a 20 bit parity (that protects all 32 bits of data). The sync bit is always the same value in all four blocks, and exists only to prevent phase inversions.

Now, the third item on the list: how DVD+R discs burn better. As I said earlier, ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP stores information about optimum power control settings. This information is basically formulas stating how much output power is needed, what the laser startup power should be, and other pieces of information you require to properly burn a DVD.

Optimum power control output is dependent on three things: burning speed, laser wavelength, and information given to the drive about the media. DVD-R basically fails on all three accounts because DVD+R simply includes far more information about the media in the ADIP data than DVD-R does in it’s pre-pit data.

DVD+R includes four optimum profiles, one for four major burning speeds (usually 2x, 4x, 6x, and 8x, though this can change as speeds increase). Each of these profiles include optimum power output based on laser wavelength, more precise laser power settings, and other additional information. With this information, any DVD+R burner can far more optimize it’s burning strategy to fit the media than it can with DVD-R, consistently providing better burns.

For comparison, DVD-R includes one profile, optimum power output based for that one profile only and uncalibrated towards what wavelength it is for, less precise laser power settings, and no other additional information. Typically, DVD-R burners have to already know how to burn a certain piece of media (and include this information in their firmwares) before they can properly burn to it. New media often is not properly supported.

In addition to the optimum power control profiles, DVD+R also gives four times more scratch space for the drive to calibrate the laser on; more space can only improve the calibration quality. So, in short, DVD+R media exists to simply produce better burns and protect your data better.

And finally, the end of the article…
Finally, after roughly three pages of technical discussion, we arrive at the end of my dissertation on archival quality CD/DVD media. So, you’re probably now wondering, in simple terms, what media do I recommend?

To begin with, I do not recommend CD-RW, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW media in any form for permanent storage. This is mostly a no-brainer, but those discs are meant to be able to be changed after burning, and they are simply unsuitable for long-term archival storage. I also do not recommend DVD-R media due to DVD+R’s superior error correction and burning control.

That said, I recommend Taiyo Yuden media across the board. Taiyo Yuden currently manufactures 52x CD-R, 16x DVD-R, and 16x DVD+R media in normal shiney silver, inkjet printable, and thermal printable forms. Taiyo Yuden may be one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive), but their media quality is unsurpassed. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I recommended buying from SuperMediaStore.com as they are the only online US distributor that guarantees that their Taiyo Yuden media is certified as coming from Taiyo Yuden.

So, what am I using? Due to Taiyo Yuden’s superior media quality, and DVD+R’s superior design, I use only Taiyo Yuden DVD+R media. I recommend this media to everyone who wishes to keep their data for a long, long time.

Update 1: It seems MAM-A and Kodak actually has managed to make a gold DVD, though no one else seems to be manufacturing them (Taiyo Yuden/JVC Advanced Media now makes an archival gold disc, see update 6). However, MAM-A’s gold archival media still doesn’t seem to exceed TY quality (although Mr 60,000 in the comments below puts TY second best to MAM-A). Due to the extreme cost of gold archival media ($2+ a disc) with very little increased protection (if any), I’ll still say TY media is better. I want to see more independent tests on this before I change my recommendation.

In addition, I’d like to mention that Verbatim has been relabeling other brands of disc as their own. If the box/spindle/cakebox the discs come in don’t say they’re manufactured with Verbatim’s proprietary Azo dye (sometimes called Advanced Azo, sometimes not, depending on the product) then they aren’t Verbatim media at all and should be avoided as they may not meet typical home archival standards.

Update 2: (Sept. 19th 2007) Its almost been a year since I first wrote this article. My recommendations for media have not changed, my recommendations for DVD burners have.

Samsung: Samsung is currently producing two drives worth owning, the
Samsung SH-S222AB
(SATA). They’re not considered archival grade, but they’re not bad.

TEAC: TEAC makes an archival drive that is ISO/IEC10995 compliant, and is very expensive. Comes in two forms, external USB DV-W5000U and internal SATA DV-W5000S. I’ve seen DV-W5000U drives for sale for $500, and refurbished DV-W5000S drives for $150-200. This is the elite of drives, and recommended if you’re very serious about 30+ year archival storage.

Update 3: (July 26th 2009) Its been awhile since I updated this article. Pioneer is no longer manufacturing drives worth using. Just buy a Samsung or TEAC drive like I link to above. I’m using two Samsung drives now after my PX-716 finally died after years of service.

My recommendation on TY and Verbatim hasn’t changed, and I imagine it will never change; DVD media will not change significantly from here on out. Bluray in my opinion is not worth switching over to unless you’re storing data that can be measured in hundreds of gigabytes, and at that point you might want to look into archival tape storage.

When Bluray is worth switching over to, I’ll write a follow up article to this one. High quality single layer media will have to drop below 50 cents a piece and Bluray burners will have to become ubiquitous (much like DVD burners are now) before that happens. I’m thinking 2011 or later.

Update 4: (August 3rd 2010) Taiyo Yuden has bought the JVC Media brand and is now operating under the JVC Advanced Media brand. You can now buy TY inside JVC boxes and get your usual TY quality. This site has the conversion of part numbers.

JVC has not bought Taiyo Yuden, and Taiyo Yuden is in full control of this new venture. They merely bought they name so they can put TY products on store shelves worldwide.

SuperMediaStore.com is selling almost all JVC Advanced Media branded TY products in place of the old TY branded ones.

Update 5: (September 27th 2011) A few people have asked about how PIE/PIF scans work.

DVD-R and DVD+R both employ two stage error correction.

PIE (Parity Inner Error) just means error correction was used, PIF (Parity Inner Failure) means the error was unrecoverable using the inner ECC block but still may be recovered using the outer ECC block . On tools that give avg/max/total, max PIE values above 140, or max PIF values above 4* means the disc needs to be replaced but the data most likely isn’t corrupted yet**.

For a burn to be considered still pristine you want max PIE below 20 and max PIF 3 or lower.

Discs will NOT be pristine after 5 years, but there is a fall off of PIF/PIE increasing after 6 months and doesn’t seem to start picking up again until 5-10 years depending on storage environment.

Totals for PIF can be as high as 100k yet have a max of 20, and total PIF can be as high as 1000 but have a max below 3. Max PIE is considered mostly fatal above 280 and can reach as high as 1664, and max PIF can reach as high as 208*.

DVD+R generally will maintain lower values for both due to superior error correction techniques.

* Some tools and/or drives won’t list above 4 for PIF.

** Some tools and/or drives also list PO (Parity Outer) uncorrectable errors. This is for any read that has a max PIF above 4. This indicates a mostly unrecoverable data corruption error, which would effect (if I’ve done my math right) 36k of data (although that doesn’t mean the whole 36k of data is corrupted, just that its corrupted inside of that 36k). This still does not indicate the disc is unreadable, some obsessive ripping tools will try multiple reads in an effort to get a valid read or different incorrect reads that can be merged into a valid read.

Update 6: (January 11th 2013) Taiyo Yuden announced last year that they are now producing an ISO/IEC10995 compliant archival grade gold alloy DVD-R. Sadly, its not DVD+R and I’m hoping they’ll consider making a DVD+R version as well. Not many vendors carry this disc yet.

Also, a few people have asked when I’m going to write that Bluray follow up article. I don’t think Bluray is viable for long term archival storage yet. I continue my recommendation that if you need to store hundreds of gigabytes of data or more, consider archival tape.

Written by
Open Source software architect and technologist. He's just this guy, you know? Follow him him on Google+.
Published in
Transmissions from the Little Blue Marble

Published October 30th, 2006

Comments

1,255 Responses

I would like to know what speed the 8x or 16x DVD-R from Taiyo Yuden you would recommend? Purpose arhival backup of digital images and data. What is the difference between Shini silver and Watershield?
Thank you for the article well worth to read!
Celesté

8x and 16x quality are the same. Slightly different formulations, but the 16x version seems to be as good as the 8x version.

Watershield allows you to print on the disc using an inkjet printer and have the printing be water resistant.

Philippe Laurent

Many thanks for the advice… although I have data in triplicate locations (using ssh/rsync and servers over the internet) for my business clients, I find that true archival is done with disconnected media where the data cannot be changed. Although I will be secondarily archiving my family photographs on TY DVD+R (thanks again for the article) at the bank (fires do happen), I’m at a loss for what to use to house the discs! Do I get a sleeved portfolio and store them in that, get individual storage cases, use poly clamshells, paper sleeves, or fancy aluminum cases?? Is the sleeved portfolio evil for archival purposes? Any feedback is most appreciated.

Use the good ole hard black poly that they make jewel cases out of (not the oily cheap kind that a lot of portfolios use). It has worked well for decades, and it should keep working well until the end of time.

Thank you for the article. Would you recommend any sites that process international shipping? I am located in Toronto Canada. Supermediastore.com does not ship out side of the U.S.

Thank-you

I’m not aware of any stores in Canada who sell TY who are known to be reliable. If you can’t find anyone, pick up Verbatim instead.

Thank you for the article. Wonderful and informative read.

For Canadian TY, try http://www.blankmedia.ca

Based in Waterloo, Ontario. They’re prompt and have been dependable for my circle of IT friends and I since at least 2000.

http://www.blankdvdmedia.com/Taiyo_Yuden_DVD.php and Tiger Direct are Canadian suppliers of T-Y DVDs.
http://tinyurl.com/mf38rm is a much-shortened link to the Tiger Direct page for this product.
Be advised that they only sell spindles of 600.
The first vendor sells spindles of 100.
I’ve been buying the Watershield version of the T-Y DVDs and am VERY happy with the print quality using both an Epson R-200 and a Canon Pixma.

My sincere thanks Patrick. Having managed to avoid the quagmire of the DVD standards battle until now, your insight has proved invaluable. Perhaps you could post another update on both hardware and media, or if little has changed, note that. I see that your page has been referenced by the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which wouldn’t normally be the case for blogs, but I think that an honourable exception has been made.

Nothing has changed, to be honest. Most of the disc media research is being put into Bluray, and I don’t think Bluray is right for archival yet. TY does sell Bluray media now, and I’ll recommend it in the future, but not for another few years.

First, thanks for this informative article. I am simply trying to find the best way to store family photos.You say not to use CD-RW, DVD-RW or DVD+RW in any form for permanent storage. Thanks for your reply. RRC

Typically drives aren’t a really big issue. I prefer using certain models because I know they tend to burn discs correctly.

If a drive burns a lot of coasters (ie, they do not pass the verify step after burning), then the drive itself is malfunctioning

You should never see more than 1 coaster per 1000 in my opinion. I have two Samsung SATA drives (same series as the ones I link to) right now and they have had zero problems for me so far.

If CDFreaks rates a drive highly, its probably of suitable quality. I trust their opinion.

Patrick:

First, thank you for an excellent post on an important topic. I just got my order of Taiyo Yuden DVD+Rs from SuperMediaStore, and am ready to start burning archives (my Master’s thesis, wedding videos, etc.)

However, I’m wondering about the importance of the drive used to burn the discs. I have an LG GSA-H22L. It’s served me well for years, and seems fairly well regarded by the folks over at CD Freaks (although some people have had issues, this seems to be the case with any drive). You listed what you use, but I’m wondering if there’s any way I can determine if the hardware I’m using is up to “archive quality”.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated (from Patrick or any other parties).

Thanks!

I complained about the packaging of the first shipment and demanded a replacement. The second shipement was packed no better, however, so I took their offer of a refund instead of trying yet again. In both cases a 100-DVD cakebox was placed with its top and bottom directly against the sides of the cardboard box — loose padding only around the sides of the cakebox. Only hand carrying could have prevented damage. In both cases the cakebox arrived shattered with shards of plastic rattling around inside. I wasn’t about to check the DVDs one by one for scratches…

Perhaps their packaging works when they ship whole lots unopened from the manufacturer, but for small lots they are no good! I will not order from them again and still need to find another source.

I do extensive business with SuperMediaStore and have never had a shipment damaged. It does sound like its an UPS problem.

Have you tried emailing SMS and telling them whats happening? They may try to ship it another method (such as Fedex, or packing it with even more padding).

My experiences with SuperMediaStore.com have been less than satisfying: Two out of two shipments have arrived severely damaged because of poor packing — definitely not UPS’s fault! Do you have other reliable sources of Taiyo Yuden media, preferably brick-and-mortar chains where I can see what I’m buying?

Ron: Not sure. I’ve never used that software.

vickie: Why bother? I don’t believe Gold archival media can beat TY…. if TY thought Gold media would work better, they’d make it themselves.

All of the gold archival DVD discs seem to be -R discs.

Any DVD+R gold archival you know of?

Thanks,
Vickie

Patrick,
I received this message while running the DVD Identifier…

** WARNING : MODE SENSE Is Obsolete And Not Always Properly Supported

Please help explain what this means.

Thanks,
Ron

Only TY DVD-R in large spindles ever had “value” and “premium” versions, their DVD+Rs only came in premium thus they never mentioned it in the product name.

The small box versions of DVD-R come in premium only, and any DVD+R product of theirs come in premium only.

Hello Patrick,

Thank you for your article. It seems to be the only one around covering the topic.

Question: I’m checking the link to supermediastore.com, but they don’t seem to have any DVD+R of the “premium line” -actually, they don’t say much about them-
Is there any other source you may think of?

Please help answer a couple of questions. I have a PLDS DVD+-RW DH-16A6S DVD drive that came installed on my Dell XPS (12/08). How would you rate this drive? Especially for digital photo archival storage? I plan on purchasing the TY 16x DVD+R that you recommend throughout. Do you still believe these discs are the way to go? Thank you. Great info you provide.

I wonder how Blu-Ray media (BD-R) compares with DVD+R?

I have been buying Taiyo Yuden media for a few years now based on the recommendations here. Thanks for the article, and I look forward to you looking at BD-Rs.

CATHI, generally, at least 25 years or more.

what is the life expectancy of a dvd, if stored properly??

It shouldn’t affect the archival quality too badly. New drives tend to not suck, generally.

If it produces a lot of coasters on TY media, the drive could be defective.

What is your opinion of Sony’s DVDirect MC5 to record DVD+R disks? Will this unit diminish the archival quality of DVD+R media in any way since it can also record DVD-R disks? Would this hardware produce any better quality DVD-R media than any other hardware?

Theres no large scale optical media yet… even single layer Bluray disc is not enough for super high resolution scans of film (such as 4x or 8x bigger than 1080p), you’d need a dozen discs for such.

Magnetic media is stable in the sense that it still needs to be managed occasionally, such as failed drives needing replaced every few years, but with RAID a single drive failure wouldn’t put your data at risk; and between using multiple computer redundancy at one location and having redundant locations, it takes a lot of failure to destroy your data.

Either way, even if you go the Bluray route, you’d need to have your data stored at multiple locations.

With Metropolis, its a shame that it took us so long to recover most of the movie… however, this wouldn’t have happened if modern data storage techniques would have been observed.

The problem with old film and old tape magnetic media from the 50s/60s/70s is that the media itself was never stable and cannot be duplicated exactly.

This is why Hollywood needs to digitally remaster all their old films no matter how crappy they were just so they can transition to digital before we lose them.

For example, look at Star Wars… if George Lucas wouldn’t have remastered it when he did, we would have lost the original forever because the original film was degrading and no one knew it.

My question would be how stable is the data on those multiple hardrives or even flash media? Both are still magnetic & relatively delicate. My guess would be that these people would want something even more bullet proof than that. The older movie classics are now big business but they come & go in popularity. One film that became obscure & nearly lost in it’s best form was Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’. A copy was preserved by chance in Argentina. Something like 12 inch stainless steel disks burned with a military power CO2 laser might appeal to them. They also don’t shrink from custom systems. The old Technicolor was just barely technically possible in the 1930″s.

Sterling Sharp, when you get to that point, then in the modern world you’re looking at privately owned rackmounted servers on multiple continents storing your digital data redundantly….

At that level, an entire country could cease to exist and the company who hosts your machines and the companies that provide services to them could also cease to exist, and you haven’t lost anything.

Obviously, mere CDs are not enough for those kind of people.

Leave a Reply