Carl Miller wrote:

On June 16 2004, (ERich10983) wrote:

I will be making many copies on CD and DVD to be handed out to anyone
in the family who wants one. They will be a lot safer this way than
the crumbling paper books the photos were stored in. Family members in

New England, California and Uzbekistan will now have baby and school
photos they never would have seen otherwise.

CDs and DVDs have been shown to degrade in less than ten years. I have a
"crumbling paper book" from WWII. 50 years from now, do you think you'll
still be able to read those disks? Do you think the technology 50 years
from now will even be compatible with those disks?

I'm not saying don't archive to CD and DVD. I'm just saying, don't think
you can simply put it on disk, forget about it for 50 years, and still
have pictures to look at.

I still have a daguerratype from the Civil war (no I did not shoot it!).
But that would be an impractical archival approach!

Phil