• echo64@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Optical discs are already incredibly resistant and shouldn’t be expected to fail in your lifetime. Most of the times they do, it’s either old media (cd and dvd both had physical flaws in design), damage, or mistakes in manufacturing.

    There’s really no reason for the discs to degrade. It’s just stamped plastic.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      When they say plastic takes [huge number] of years to decompose, they’re talking about how long it takes to disappear completely. The usable lifetime for most plastic objects seems to be only a few decades. (I don’t know about the specific plastic they use for optical discs, though.)

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      Pressed optical discs will last a very long time. The lifetime of burned discs depends on the type of dye that’s used to store the data. Many of the early CD-R’s would get corrupted after a few years, but that was solved a long time ago.