Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony
(archival grade optical disks are good for a millennium or more).
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While consumer versions can go bad in as little as a month (for those that manage to verify during the write process), or they could last a couple of decades in a moderately controlled environment (ie. stored at room temperature in a sleeve/case).
I wouldn't give much of a chance of the media being worth checking after a couple of years if it wasn't stored in a way that would prevent accidential scratching the surface.
But with the current real world archival sites, I'd expect many of the locations dedicated to storing knowledge world would survive. From my recollection there are at least a couple of Swiss archives that will basically survive anything but "Did you manage to turn Switzerland into a crater?" The US has at least one such archive as well. I expect both Russia and China have similar sites, but I can't remember any actual information on it.