Re: [ARSCLIST] Memorex CDs

[Claus Trelby <ctrelby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Karl and all,

As some of you might know I have a tendency not to get into specific
scientific discussions on this list. I appreciate accelerated aging tests,
as well as life experiences.

We all discuss things with some set of predefined opinions based on science,
experience, feelings, price, rumors and other things. We obviously conduct
our jobs of preserving historical treasures for future generations in a way
we believe to be the best or at least the best we can do at the time under
our individual circumstances.

I don’t know Mr. Gereche from the MSN/Yahoo article, but I’ll assume he
believes what he is quoted to say. It also seems obvious he is close to the
tape storage business and he would probably not work on this technology
unless he believed it had value. I am sorry to have introduced yesterday’s
news today.

One thing I know for sure is that my crystal ball is broken. I don’t know if
ebay is operating in 20 years so we can get hardware to play CDs back… It’s
likely and I hope so, since many versions of my work in the entertainment
industry as an engineer and producer is stored on that medium. What about
200 years… I know… stupid question, but the crystal ball…

I think variety is spice. I don’t put all my money on one horse, and I
diversify my portfolio… the last part is false since I don’t have one. In my
career I have experienced the obsolescence of machines to play back tapes
that are in perfect condition…. Mitsubishi 850 anyone?

Yes the machine can be gotten now but I don’t believe all the owners of
content necessarily have the foresight to get all tapes for the format
transferred before they are basically gone… a short lived format that has
gone under the radar, but still was used by many major artists. I would hate
to be the manager for a team that tries to rebuild such a machine from
scratch. Most people at Mitsubishi don’t even know they used to produce the
machine.

I am trying to say we all need to look forward and keep our eyes on the ball
at the same time. The only way I see to do that is to play it safe.
Diversify our digital storage formats. Even stone tablets break if they fall
from high enough a place, and even if Audio CDs play, a bit for bit
comparison to a duplicate disk might not reveal a true representation of
what was burned. Were do we draw the line of what is good enough…. I don’t
pretend to have the answer, just an opinion of trying to produce the best
work possible.

Karl, I’m not sure if you got what you wanted from your post, but I think
any improvement on disk longevity and fault tolerance is a must and a plus,
and I will certainly try the new Memorex disks, but I will also still use
MAM, tape, HD (exercised often), and the next generation of digital storage
that gets thrown my way. I will at this point in time not trust any single
format to survive 100+ years in any kind of storage environment without a
noticeable percentage of defects.

I do not want to be the one who has to bring news to a clients that their
work has been lost or even slightly damaged because I didn’t have the time
to migrate before it was too late.

Sincerely,

Claus.




-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Karl Miller
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 2:11 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Memorex CDs


On Thu, 12 Jan 2006, Claus Trelby wrote:

> Interesting article today on MSN:
>
> http://msn.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124312,00.asp?GT1=7645

And what is the take on this article?

" If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use
magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a
lifetime"

Karl
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