Life Expectancy for CD-R/CD-RW
CNET.com has a very informative discussion thread about the life expectancy for burnable audio media.
I don’t about all of you, but I certainly have a large number of CDs that are of the non-commercial variety (self recordings and the like). Just this weekend I have been going through a big box of them and noticing significant degradation on some of the older ones. These are only about 5-8 years old, and admittedly I haven’t treated them with the upmost care. More like, I left them in my parent’s garage for a summer, then threw them in a box, moved them 500 miles to Michigan, put them in a closet, and jostled them considerably. Luckily I haven’t found anything that is irreplaceable that I will lose, but it is creating a sense of urgency for me to get going on my full-on digital conversion.
CDs are not forever. Back-up anything valuable.