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Materials saved to DVDs, CDs or other optical storage devices where the media is out of warranty and reader devices may no longer be supported or integrated easily into hardware infrastructure: typically more than five years old. |
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Group: Portable Media |
Trend: New Entry |
Consensus Decision |
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Added to List: 2019 |
Last update: 2019 |
Previous category: New Entry |
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Imminence of Action Action is recommended within three years, detailed assessment is in 12 months |
Significance of Loss The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on many people and sectors. |
Effort to Preserve It would require a major effort to prevent losses in this group, including the development of new preservation tools or techniques |
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Examples CDs, laser disc technologies, DVD, HDVD |
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‘Practically Extinct’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions Poor storage; inability to access readers; no replication; encryption |
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‘Endangered’ in the Presence of Good Practice Active management; dependable access to readers; strong documentation; documentation independent from the media |
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2019 Review The judges have introduced this entry to ensure that the range of media storage is properly assessed and presented. Optical media is in some senses a preferred option as it is typically more stable than magnetic or solid state media: but these characteristics have been over-sold. The substrates of the disks can prove unstable and more importantly the reader technology tends to be proprietary and can become obsolete long before the disks degrade. Storage at scale also means the percentage likelihood of failure increases. |
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Additional Jury Comments Highly dependent on who is looking after the portable media but made more difficult over time. There is a lack of granularity in the definition of media types so generic advice like "make sure you're moving your data to new forms of storage every 5 -10 years". Early generations of this media are not as robust as the current generation and can deteriorate significantly if not stored appropriately. |
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