Old CDs: I was cleaning out a junk drawer and found some photo CDs that were 15-20 years old. Most of them loaded OK although they seem to take longer to load than I would have...

Chessysailor Loc: Southport, NC

I was cleaning out a junk drawer and found some photo CDs that were 15-20 years old. Most of them loaded OK although they seem to take longer to load than I would have expected. I then tried to transfer them to my offline drive. It looked like the transfer would work but then my system locked up - no mouse, no kb, nothing. I would then reboot and try the transfer again. Sometimes it would work, but more often than not it would hang up again. This might be happening for several reasons, but I'm curious if anyone has had problems with old CDs.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Deleted. I misinterpreted.
(I've had no problems with old program CDs)

hpucker99 Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

I had some old photo CDs from the early 2000's that I tried to read. No success with some of them maybe "CD rot". I still have them and came across a web site that offers a program that can read them such as with a SD card. Not sure if I want to restore them, I found my early digital photos not to be all that good.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Hopefully, the entire UHH Community who gleefully creates physical media will finally once and for all realize they're wasting their time and risking their memories. We've been here for a decade talking about this risk: consumer-grade physical media will not last, not your CDs, not your DVDs. If your only copy is physical media, and these memories are important, get them copied back onto actively used and actively backed-up and actively maintained equipment, hard-disk and / or cloud.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Try copying bad CD into new blank. This way sometimes my old WIN11 has read bad CDs and later made new CD that my iMac could read
Has not worked all the time.
Good luck

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Long lasting physical media : B&W negs, Kodachrome, Ilfochrome prints and LPs!
Keep telling my children of their “obligation” to keep copying HDs and watchout for formats that will become obsolete in future to save memories of our family !
Do not know how long Cloud servers will be around. Used an early one that dissapeared, fortunately I had copies in HD
Will spinning or solid state HDs last longer?

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

A 40-year career in the data processing field has revealed some ugly truths about technology, marketing, and "experts." I remember when hard disks were sold boasting incredible technical values, like "Mean Time Between Failure" (MTBF). Shown in hours, if you did some quick math, sometimes these numbers would represent hundreds or even thousands of years! How were they able to test these??? And why were hard disk failures so common?

I have come to believe that if you want to preserve your photographs, the best thing is to do what the pros do. And have done forever: Print them on acid-free paper, enclose them in glass, or store them in climate-controlled storage. I have photo albums that belonged to my parents that have childhood photos in them -- these are now 100 years old. I seriously doubt my grandkids (or their kids) will be able to view my photos if I store them on USB/hard drives 100 years from now.

Mechanical devices will fail. The only question is, "When?"

tcthome Loc: NJ

CHG_CANON wrote:

Hopefully, the entire UHH Community who gleefully creates physical media will finally once and for all realize they're wasting their time and risking their memories. We've been here for a decade talking about this risk: consumer-grade physical media will not last, not your CDs, not your DVDs. If your only copy is physical media, and these memories are important, get them copied back onto actively used and actively backed-up and actively maintained equipment, hard-disk and / or cloud.

How about floppies. I have a couple of Kodak floppies.

Thought about them the other night while watching an action movie where someone shoves a floppy into a computer. Thankfully I would always opt for the prints also.

tcthome Loc: NJ

Tote1940 wrote:

Long lasting physical media : B&W negs, Kodachrome, Ilfochrome prints and LPs!
Keep telling my children of their “obligation” to keep copying HDs and watchout for formats that will become obsolete in future to save memories of our family !
Do not know how long Cloud servers will be around. Used an early one that dissapeared, fortunately I had copies in HD
Will spinning or solid state HDs last longer?

I try to print the decent photos often enough. Still doesn't do enough if the home goes down.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If many printed for archival purposes, they'd need a storage locker for them, or a one car garage...

Chessysailor Loc: Southport, NC

Just curious. How do businesses and governments keep up with the information that they collect? Punch cards to magnetic tape to RAID to ...I don't know what comes next. I guess they have to periodically rerecord old stuff on to the latest and greatest device.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Chessysailor wrote:

Just curious. How do businesses and governments keep up with the information that they collect? Punch cards to magnetic tape to RAID to ...I don't know what comes next. I guess they have to periodically rerecord old stuff on to the latest and greatest device.

Yes, exactly. Physical records, when possible, are copied to electronic files and the originals discarded. Various laws control if this is an valid option, depending on industries and / or localities. Electronic records are then continuously migrated onto current, operational, and maintained equipment. 'Physical Media' even applies to the film and record industries where older films were turning to dust in their cans before an effort was taken to digitize all these reels. Same for records / older reel-to-reel recordings.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Chessysailor wrote:

Just curious. How do businesses and governments keep up with the information that they collect? Punch cards to magnetic tape to RAID to ...I don't know what comes next. I guess they have to periodically rerecord old stuff on to the latest and greatest device.

Yes, the data is migrated to the latest used storage medium they use.
Just as I do.
I no longer use floppies, still some CDs though.
I use hard drives, FOBs, and the cloud.

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

Just Fred wrote:

.

Mechanical devices will fail. The only question is, "When?"

This why I periodically shoot a roll of Tri X of my family members, especially the younger one so that my "stuff" will include some B/W prints and negatives. I'm still working with some of my dad's negatives which are 100 years old.

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

tcthome wrote:

How about floppies. I have a couple of Kodak floppies.

Thought about them the other night while watching an action movie where someone shoves a floppy into a computer. Thankfully I would always opt for the prints also.

The problems with floppies and other magnetic tape media is that the polymer matrix "relaxes" and iron particles reorient then data are lost.