Delkin releases eFilm Archival Gold "300-Year" CD-Rs
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted Oct 29th 2004 7:18AM
posted Oct 29th 2004 7:18AM
Using no less than 24K gold, Delkin Devices have created the eFilm
Archival Gold "300-Year" CD-R. As opposed to standard CD-Rs that can go bad within a few years due to
environmental elements like humidity and ultraviolet light, the gold disks are rated to last more than 300 years (since
they haven't quite had 300 years to test this out, they're basing their claims on an "accelerated aging process" test).
Of course, if the discs only end up lasting 200 years, you probably won't be around to find that out, but
whatever.
if 30 years ago, the Scelbi personal computer came with 1k of programmable memory, i cant imagine how insignificant the amount of data on these cd-rs will be in 30 x 10 years...
Is this really neccesary? Has anyone here ever actually seen a CD go bad due to age or environmental conditions? I haven't. I just pulled out my oldest audio CD, from 1986, and it still looks like the day I bought it and it plays perfectly. And my first data CDs from 1995 are just fine as well.
This is a CD-R, emphasis on the "R". And to answer your question, yes I have seen many high-quality CD-R from supposedly "top" manufacturers go bad. I am not the only person too. So, a 300 year old guarantee is always welcomed.
Appears that they are buying Mitsui and putting their label on it.
http://www.mitsuicdr.com/products/Gold/index.html
This product has been out for quite a while....has been fairly popular with medical testing facilities...patient data..etc,etc
I've seen a few CD-Rs rot quite badly. I worked in a small design house in a basement that got quite hot in summer and very cold during winter (espeially at night with noone there and all the PC's off). We had a bunch of BasF media that went bad within 6 months.
Besides cd rot, actually many "bad" cds can't be read is just because you are using a different computer, the format is supposed to be standard, but unfortunately, it doesn't work this way.
Yeah, data disks, almost all of mine over 4 years old have bad sectors or are completely unreadable. My HD crashed last summer and I turned to my cdr backups to recover files and most importantly Photos dating back years.
Painful lesson. What I've learned from professional photographers was a system of creating copies of cdr's every year or two of critical files and keeping everything. I've been dying for someone to come out with an archival quality cdr, although right now I'm hoping for archival quality DVDR. I still won't trust em until they're time proven. I'll keep redoing my archiving every year (it's become part of my new year's tradition, rebackup all photos and stuff...)
There is a need for a CD that can provide some level of assurance that content will remain "intact" for an extended period of time, but the problem remains the same, as mentioned by a couple of people. The format of the information captured needs to be legible by applications and hardware for a period of time equivalent to the lifespan of the media, or you need to constanly convert and migrate the information forward to accessible formats and fresh, usable media.
Also, I'm sure this media is not much different than most of the commercially produced media available... the manufacturers warranty extends to replacing the media only, and that's providing you keep the media stored in accordance with their stated requirements for the entire time you own it.
Also as mentioned by another poster, there is a need to consider producing multiple copies of "critical or vital" information simultaneously and storing one copy in appropriate environmental conditons (constant temperature and humidity, away from light and magnetic sources, etc.) to extend it's life.
Larry
Is there an equivalent gold archival dvd? Seems like there should be, since the basic technology is similar if not the same, just more layers