Optical Disc Risk

CDs and DVDs are popular digital media formats, but it doesn’t mean they’re safe. If you have backups on optical disc media, you must understand the risks to your memories. Recordable CDs were introduced in 1991 and recordable DVDs were released in 1997, and many of us used these discs as backups for our digital photos. We believed they would be available for years to come, possibly even decades or centuries.

Unfortunately, optical discs are at risk in many ways and should be copied to hard drives ASAP.

The most common risks include:

• This CD arrived in our studio as part of a client project and a crack like this renders the entire CD unreadable.
• Most people worry about scratches on the underside of a disc, but did you know that the reflective material on the top of the disc is even more delicate? If the top of the disc gets even a tiny scratch the laser cannot reflect back to the player and the disc will be unreadable.
• In the late 1990s and early 2000s it was popular to label discs with printed, adhesive labels. Unfortunately, those labels can wrinkle over time and cause the reflective top layer to flake off, making the disc unreadable.
• Even if the disc doesn’t have physical damage, the organic dyes used in most home-burned CD-R and DVD+-R media can decay in as little as 18 months. We see failure rates as high as 20% on home-burned discs even though they look fine.
• When optical discs fail, it’s usually complete failure and none of the files can be recovered.

I worked for several years in the CD/DVD industry and I do not trust my memories to these optical disc formats. We recommend gathering all your discs and copying the files to a hard drive which is more reliable, easier to back up, and up to 3,000 times faster! We do this all the time for our clients as part of their digital photo organizing projects, so please contact us if you need help.

Interested in working with Chaos to Memories?

If you’re near Chicago and ready to get started, come visit our Wheaton Studio Monday – Friday, 10-5. Please bring your memories with you.

Contact us for more information, shipping instructions, and to get started on your project.