SD card image salvage and archiving.

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Eugene T

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I have some SD cards from years ago and starting to realize there may be some problems with image retrieval.
Do the images on the SD card self destruct or is there a way of retrieval for archive and posterity purposes ?. What about CD disc storage , again whats the time period for life span ?.

Many thanks
 
I have CDs from over 10-15 years ago and they are still OK, but I keep them in a CD folder so they are not exposed to daylight or sunlight.
Years ago I did a test on DVDs to see how long the data would last when exposed to sunlight.
The answer was not very long - after just a few days on a window sill exposed to sunlight the data was corrupted.
But I also have DVDs which have been kept in folders and they seem to last about 10 years or so - but these are branded well known ones (DataWrite and Phillips).
Lesser brands or generic (Poundland) etc do not keep anywhere near as long even if you get a completely good write.
Blu-Ray discs which use ablative writing last very long and do not seem to be corrupted by sunlight (as you would expect) but for longevity avoid the ones which use dyes.
I wouldn't use SD cards (or indeed any memory storage) for long term archival purposes because they can ALL suffer from slow degradation over the years - the best bet is at least TWO complete backups of all important data and at least one should be somewhere separate to the first.
My photos for instance are backed up to several mediums - the cloud, DVD.s, HDDs ets.
If you store on magnetic HDDs I would write all data to a new HDD at least every five years to ensure the data stays relatively fresh and trouble free.
 
Sounds like more research to do. Thanks for the info, was,nt aware of UV or heat or whatever affecting CD,s.
 
Eugene T said:
Sounds like more research to do. Thanks for the info, was,nt aware of UV or heat or whatever affecting CD,s.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, my son bought a pack of 20 DVDs a while back and left them on his window sill. 3 months later every one of them was ruined - the recording surface was discoloured at the edges and writing to the disc failed. He was not a happy bunny :( ... but he won't do it again :)
 
Eugene T said:
What make were they ?.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't matter what make they were - the dyes in DVDs and CDs are designed to change when exposed to a strong light - usually a leaser beam in the re-writer but daylight or sunlight will do the job just as well but just take a little longer.
 
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