archival cd-r - really true?

John Allain wrote: I'm not sure this will be a popular view, but *nothing* is a good archival medium if it isn't maintained. I and several other listmembers have done a lot of transcription for entities - mostly University of Texas in my case - who scrupulously archived, double-archived, and preserved critical data. Then at some point they scrapped the hardware needed to access their prescious tapes. Or lost the backup/restore application used to make the archives. Or, or, or.... My real-world job is for a company who specializes in data management and data protection, and we put it to our clients as an axiom. All archived data needs to be tested and migrated on a frequent (3-5 years max) basis. I've never seen anything on CC that implies we should follow any different principle. My point is that in no case should you rely on the quality of your medium to preserve historical data, and which meium and which format you use should be (within reason) a matter of current convenience and accessibility. You'll be migrating it before that medium is obsolete or likely to expire. Nothing says you can't keep the original sets and the original equipment and tools, but that information should frequently be copied to whatever your environment currently handles. I have a lot of DOS and UNIX OS and applications stored as original media and as "dd", Teledisk and Winimage backups on 4mm DDS1 tape. I'll be keeping all that, but I'm also migrating it all to ImageDisk, dd, and mktape sets on DLT-IV and DVDR. Doc