Answer Line: Will My CD-R and DVD+R Discs Still Run in 10 Years?
An IBM information storage expert has said that CD-Rs and DVD±Rs typically last only two to five years. Is that true? Walter Sekula, Greensburg, Pennsylvania Kurt Gerecke of IBM Deutschland GmbH caused quite a stir in January when he stated that “unlike pressed original CDs, burned CDs have a relatively short life span of between two to five years, depending on the quality of the CD.” Since then, I’ve seen his estimate quoted as established fact. What I haven’t seen is real-world evidence. I have yet to receive a single Answer Line letter about an aged disc. I checked with Ontrack and DriveSavers, the two leading data recovery services, and neither reports that age is causing CD-R failures. When I tested some of the oldest CD-Rs I own, I found no errors on them (and most of those discs were the cheapest I could buy at the time). CD-Rs have been common for much longer than five years; if their shelf life was that short, we’d have known it long ago. But that doesn’t mean these discs will
