Apparently there is a photo conservation mail list on Yahoo. I spotted
this tale there after someone cross posted it to the Kiron-Klub mail
list on Yahoo. It appears that there is a Kodak spin-off company called
KMP Media operating out of Rochester and they have brought back the
Kodak gold CD and (now) DVD under the title of Preservation CD's and
DVD's.
The KMP Media link is near the end of the story below. I found the
Kodak CD's (but not the DVD's) for sale at
<http://www.datamediastore.com/datamediastore/29150.html> for USD 113.99
per hundred with lower prices available for quantity purchases.
Data Media Store also sells MAM-A gold archival media (both CD and DVD)
at similar prices. DVD's cost about twice as much and have a lower
rated lifetime (but still estimated at 50 years)
<http://www.datamediastore.com/mamamitsui.html>
Chuck Norcutt
-----Original Message-----
From: photoconservation@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:photoconservation@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of nadeaul
Sent: Saturday, April 29, 2006 8:12 PM
To: photoconservation@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [photoconservation] Kodak's new Preservation CDs & DVDs
In the early days of CDRs Kodak's products had an excellent reputation
for durability. Their gold CDRs were expensive though and their
products were driven out of the market by cheaper, and often mediocre
alternative products. In recent years cheap CDRs have received bad rap
in the conservation community because of their poor reliability.
Early last summer I found myself cleaning old drawers and came across a
number of redundant CDRs which I thought I would throw away. Then it
occured to me that perhaps I would "recycle" a few of them as coasters,
especially one Kodak Gold CDR which I knew contained about $0.25 of
actual gold. I left a number of these CDRs on a picnic table on
my deck, facing south, but in the shade so they would not be exposed to
direct sunlight and rain. They still had to endure a huge amount of UV
radiation, extreme humidity, etc., all summer.
By the end of the summer, nearly all of them were completely ruined. It
was difficult to see the original trademarks (Sony, etc.) and the discs
were almost perfectly clear. There was nothing left there to read by a
laser beam. But there was one exception: The old, original Kodak CDR
looked almost pristine. The label, the inks used for the trademark
information and the gold coating looked like new. The only telltale
signs of this torture test were the many small scratches left by the
beer and wine glasses that sat on that disc all summer.
This could hardly be called a scientific test but it is a good sign that
the original Kodak Gold CDRs were made with permanence in mind. It's
nice to hear that Kodak is now re-entering the CDR market:
<http://www.kmpmedia.com/kodak-gold.html>
Luis Nadeau
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