New EMCA Test For The Archival Lifetime of Optical Media

[Ian]

Those of you thinking about doing your own archival tests might want to check out Ecma Standard 379. Take note of the last paragraph.

http://www.ecma-international.org/publi ... ma-379.htm

Standard ECMA-379
Test Method for the Estimation of the Archival Lifetetime of Optical Media

This Ecma Standard specifies an accelerated aging test method for estimating the life expectancy for the retrievability of information stored on recordable or rewritable optical disks.

This test includes details on the following formats: DVD-R/-RW/-RAM, +R/+RW. It may be applied to additional optical disk formats with the appropriate specification substitutions and may be updated by committee in the future as required.

This document includes;

* stress conditions
* assumptions
* ambient conditions
* Controlled storage condition, e.g. 25 ° C and 50% RH, using Eyring model

Uncontrolled storage condition, e.g. 30 ° C and 80% RH, using Arrhenius model

* evaluation system description
* specimen preparation
* data acquisition procedure
* data interpretation

The methodology includes only the effects of temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH). It does not attempt to model degradation due to complex failure mechanism kinetics, nor does it test for exposure to light, corrosive gases, contaminants, handling, and variations in playback subsystems. Disks exposed to these additional sources of stress or higher levels of T and RH are expected to experience shorter usable lifetimes.

The entire document can be downloaded here:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publi ... MA-379.pdf

[Scour]

Woohoo, very hard to read for me and a bit to big

[Halc]

Now let's hope manufacturers start testing and grading their advertised LE claims according to ECMA-397.

It is really sad to notice that discs which are claimed to last 50 years fail completely within a year when exposed to high enough humidity (RH 80+) and temp (30C+/-5).

[Scour]

Do you think that the manufacturers did notice this new standard? I dunno whether they still develope new DVD-media, they mostly focus on BD and HD-DVD

[Halc]

Yes they did. Even some brand makers like Imation, referenced it in their own presentations, before it was even finalized.

There is a small, but growing demand for archival grade optical media with higher capacity than CD-R.

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far from archival grade currently and it could be that they will never be deployed for such use.

Recordable DVD still has several years to go.

[Scour]

But Imation don´t manufacture by itself?

[Halc]

Yes, exactly, That's why I wrote "brand makers".

But they do get manufactured to specifications.

They were planning an archival grade dvd-r release, but I don't know what became out of it, if anything.

[Scour]

Hope it will be out soon