Duh. CD. Good for 100+ years. Non-magnetic.
I wouldn't bet too heavily on the burned CD/DVD being readable
for that long. They are made with various organic dyes an must be protected from light, heat, and air. They are not all created with the same processes or materials and none have
existed for 100 years.
Since CDs haven't been in widespread use for 100 years yet, that's totally a "head in the sand" presumption. I doubt if even the stamped gold plated CDs will last 100 years.
Theoretically, IF the CD is kept in a dark environment, free of dust and with a stable temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And using top-of-the-line CD-Rs.
Operationally, 5-10 years is more likely for a written CD-R lifespan.
100+ years? In your dreams, I'm afraid; much professional literature addresses the transience of CD as a storage medium. There are many documented instances of properly archived CDs becoming partially or completely unreadable in scant years, let alone decades. Save your "Duh"s for the easy ones; this is an incredibly important issue that is not subject to quick'n'easy resolution, and that is becoming more and more difficult to solve.
You either didn't read or didn't understand the story.
100 years? No. Not even close. 5-10 years in most cases.
Even in cases where the physical media remains intact and readable, it can be a challenge to find software that reads old file formats. Also the software that reads many old files will not function on newer operating systems. Many old Windows 3.1 programs will not function in XP, generating errors on load up.
So pick your poison. Keep old machines handy to read old files, and those machines *might* boot up for you later when you decide you need these old files. Or cross your fingers and hope the OS of tomorrow will care to play nice with your data - if your CD is still good, which is a long shot.
I wouldn't count on it.
Here's a depressing little snippet:
The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn't be read anymore:
Roughly translated from Dutch:
The tests showed that a number of CD-Rs had become completely unreadable while others could only be read back partially. Data that was recorded 20 months ago had become unreadable. These included discs of well known and lesser known manufacturers.
Yet Cohen said he had noticed that some of his CDs, especially the rewritable variety, are already beginning to degrade. "About a year and a half ago they started to deteriorate and become unreadable," he said.
As the article says, and as I can personally attest, CD's aren't all they're cracked up to be re: permanent storage. I use them in my work and they go bad relatively often.