How reliable are manufacturers longevity estimates?
While some manufacturers have used accelerated life testing to support estimated life expectancy claims ranging from 20 to 200 years, how manufacturers interpret those tests to estimate longevity is often unclear. [5] Tests involving only a single stress, such as temperature, may yield a greater estimated longevity than if the same media had been exposed to multiple stresses temperature, relative humidity, and exposure to simulated sunlight depending on the media’s characteristics. The measurements selected as end-of-life indicators can significantly affect the interpretation of life expectancy from test results. A number of published manufacturers’ reports employ BLER as the sole end-of-life measurement [6, 7], but tests conducted by Media Sciences, Inc. have shown that BLER alone is an unreliable indicator of failure. [8, 9, 10] Unless a manufacturer can provide their accelerated life testing results for a given recordable optical media product, any longevity claims for that product
