We are offering this advice as a guide only, these are not the absolute guidelines for storing your media. Please check with your governing agency as to your specific needs.
FicheNet Imaging Solutions position of reality is that data stored on CD-R and DVD-R media will be useful in the 20-30 year range. This may not seem long, but that range will probably long outlive the technology to use them. Discs may last longer physically, but take a look at current computer technology and it's incredible accelerated development. Do you think that today's current technology CD-ROM's will be readable in that same 20-30 life expectancy? Possibly, but we feel this should be looked at closely. Consider technology migration for a moment. The number one unavoidable fact is that electronically stored records are technology dependent and therefore technology obsolescence is likely to be the most serious impediment to the long-term usability of these records. Therefore, the development and implementation of a migration strategy to ensure that digital records created today can be both processed by computers and intelligible to humans in the 21st century is absolutely essential. Imagine if your data were on 8 track tapes, where can one find an 8 track tape player these days? Or how about this argument; how many of you still have a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive to read those big floppy discs? I bet if you dig deep enough somewhere back in your companies archive you would find some of those now ancient (it's been less than 15 years) 5 1/4 floppies and you would probably find that your current IT department has no way of reading these discs either. This belief has much to do with our ArkScan, best of both worlds solution. If you need the on-line capability to access many records quickly and from multiple work stations, then Electronic Imaging to CD-ROM is for you, but if you are looking for long term archiving for important documents Film Based Imaging is still the best solution available. See our Electronic and Film Based Imaging Facts page for more information.
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