Do pictures stored on CDs deteriorate over time?

[Globalti]

...or is it just that early pictures were taken with a rubbish digital camera?

I wonder if the actual finish on CDs deteriorates, I've heard that it does on music CDs.

Just found an old CD and looking through some forgotten pictures from around 2003 but the colours are dull and the definition terrible.

 

[Herr-B]

Yes, any media format, be it digital or otherwise, degrades over time. Even hard drives - people think these last forever but they don't, and are likely to suffer from a mechanical failure before the data disappears.

The only way is backup, backup to photo paper, back up to a seperate hard drive, and copy to a recording media such as CD/DVD. Once you've backed up to these locations you need to back up again to different drives/DVDs after about 18 months - two years. It's not very practical, but worth it for any cherished photos such as weddings (unless you're divorced ) and children.

 

[BSRU]

You can buy gold cd's/dvd's which are supposed to keep the data longer than a standard disc.

 

[ColinJ]

Not the way that you mean, no - they must have been rubbish pictures to start with. Digital cameras have improved a lot over the past decade!

That's the whole point about digital recording - the data only needs to be stored accurately enough that each individual binary bit can be recognised as a '0' or a '1'. If it gets corrupted then your files tend to become unusable, rather than degraded the way that analogue audio recordings did. (Error correction can sometimes mask some small defects on CD audio recordings, but generally speaking digital either works or it doesn't.)

Just think of digital TV pictures vs analogue - you no longer get any ghosting or random speckling*** on the screen but very occasionally the picture gets 'stuck' or jumps when a transmission/reception error is bad enough to confuse the digibox circuitry.

CDs and DVDs can degrade over time to the point where they become unreliable, but that's different to the actual contents of the files stored on them mysteriously becoming lower quality.

*** You could see the picture break up into horrible digital blockiness and/or colour-banding if inadequate bandwidth were available.

 

[fossyant]

The actual 'pictures' won't degrade, but the data can become un-readable.

 

[Globalti]

Thanks. Must have been a rubbish camera then.

 

[roadrash]

[QUOTE 2355986, member: 45"]I've stored all of our pictures on dvd. The problem is I can only see the picture when I look at the underside, and it only seems to ever save the one of my face.[/quote]
that reminds me of the two dimwits walking down the street ,one of them finds a mirror ,while looking into it he says "bloody hell this fellow looks familiar,second chap looks into it and says of course he does ...its me you fool

 

[chqshaitan]

A good long term solution to this is to use an on line cloud storage provider.

Amazon offer a very cheap service called glacier, if you do not need instant access to the data.

It costs nothing to upload to it, and costs around 5 or 6p a gigabyte per month. see here for more pricing info

 

[sheddy]

And what happens when their server depot gets hit by an asteroid ?

 

[chqshaitan]

the data is spread across multiple locations, have at the Faq more info. I personally use it for storing backups of 'my docs' profile areas on the various pc's that i have at home.

 

[biggs682]

they shouldnt fade or stick together like they use to

 

[andrew_s]

And what happens when their server depot gets hit by an asteroid ?

What's more likely is that some future Amazon executive will decide that the cost/benefit isn't good enough, and will close the service down.

 

[Raging Squirrel]

But they would be legally obligated to inform any subscribers whose data may be at risk on said servers