CD vs: DVD for archival

Archival qualities depend on the materials the disk is made with and the conditions they are stored in. After doing lots of research I'm using Delkin e-Film Archival Gold DVD-R and CD-R disks and i'm pretty comfortatable with that choice of brand and disk. But these are also backed up on to multiple hard drives as well

I think you'll find DVDs generally the better option over CDs. They seem more stable to me. I have friends who use cheap spindle CDs, but they're very careful about backing them up routinely. A DVD may last for decades and decades, but will there be a DVD drive around that can read them at that point?

With the next generation of optical media already around the corner, DVD need not last very long. Just long enough.

Emre, what's coming around the corner?

NIST actually studied this question! I don't understand all the details, but it seems like some brands of DVD-R degrade faster than the best CDR brands. Odd, because all DVD+-R uses the same dye technology I think, metalized azo. Here is the NIST publication if anybody wants to help me understand it. The trouble is that most errors are measured differently on CDR versus DVDR.

Thank you for the above link. It certainly points out that the type of ink used in the Delkin Gold CD and DVD is superior. It does not indicate that CD might be any better than DVD so I will use Delkin Gold DVD from now on.

Thanks again for the link, I'm actually surprised to find a manufacturer claim of superiority and of a superior material (dye type) to be based in apparent fact.

I've given up with optical media as an archival method. HD's are so cheap these days. I'm in the process of transfering my DVD archive back to a HD system - multiple copies at that. I've already had some problems recovering data on DVD's only a couple of years old.

One of the top two disc makers, Mitsui/MAM advertises their archival gold CDs as having a 300 year life span, but they rate their "archival" DVDs at only 100 years. If they have only 1/3 the confidence in their DVDs, I will stick to their CDs. Also, CD players are ubiquitous to a greater degree than the correct version of DVD player.

For my own use, I use multiple hard drives, but when I provide a disc to a customer, it's on a MAM gold CD.

Eric: I am referring to HD-DVD/BR, both of which are planned to be offered as recordable media (in contrast to DVD, which was initially read-only).

I have a spindle of CD-Rs containing 35mm film scans. At five pictures a disc, all I can say is no thanks.