Identifying Top Quality CD and DVD Media for Archiving

Will your medical or bank records stored on CD or DVD still be retrievable 10 or 20 years from now? The answer depends on how well this type of media are cared for and on specific manufacturing processes used, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
Knowing that CDs and DVDs will work reliably for a certain number of years is critical to government agencies, hospitals, banks and other organizations that store massive amounts of vital data on optical discs.