Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Optical Media (CD/DVD) Data Loss

Tim will be at NECCC. http://www.neccc.org/
I thought that today's question/answer would be of interest to everyone...

Digital Darkroom Questions (DDQ)
June 24, 2008
by Tim Greywww.timgrey.comtim@timgrey.com
Books: www.timgrey.com/books/index.htm
Blog: www.timgrey.com/blog

Question: I have thousands of high resolution photos archived in CD's and DVD's (in addition to archiving in external hard drives). Of more than 300 CD's and DVD's I have found that there are about 10-15 in which the files have been damaged or corrupted (in spite of the fact that I store them in a proper environment).

I have two questions: 1) can you suggest software that I could use to try to recover these files, and, most important; 2) in your opinion, what is the best media (CD and DVD) that is currently out there for archival purposes? I remember when CD and DVD media started coming out that it was said that it would last for a hundred years, well, we have learned that is not the case. So, what is currently the best in terms of long life archival characteristics?

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Answer:


As I've said many times, when comparing the longevity ratings of various optical media (CDs and DVDs) I really thought of the ratings as only providing a relative indication of the quality of the discs, not of the longevity you should actually expect from the discs. I've seen a great many optical discs fail (both CD and DVD) to the point that I simply don't trust them for archival storage.

There are certainly issues with hard drive storage, but in my mind maintaining a library on redundant hard drives is far more reliable than the use of optical media. So, while I might recommend media such as the Verbatim DataLifePlus line of products, I really recommend avoiding optical media for long-term archival storage.

As for recovering data from your optical media, there's a good chance you'll be able to recover a significant portion of the data stored on a given disc. Often a single error results in the entire disc being considered unreadable by your operating system, when it is still possible to salvage data.

There are a variety of tools available for recovering data from your optical media, but one I've had some success with is BadCopy Pro from Jufsoft. You can get more details and download a free trial version here:
http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/

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