I just asked if the closed ziplock bag contains any holes or openings enter air and will it have moisture condensation inside the bag? Is it a problem for long-term storage of discs? silica does not protect permanently in case of puncture in the bag

Thinking about it. Since you've been posting endless variations of the same question "How long will my DVDs last." over the past 5++ years, you should write a scientific white paper on how the humidity has affected the lifespan of YOUR DVDs in YOUR geographic location at YOUR house in YOUR closet under YOUR storage conditions. I'm sure with 6 billion+ people in the world there's someone who may find it of interest.

After all, there is no way anyone else could possibly begin to give you the 100% definitive answer to your question!

Yes, because as you're been told a long, long time ago, ANY moisture has an effect on the lifespan of your discs.

No! Because nothing is permanent

Read the entire post before this!

If moisture enters the punctured ziplock bag, does dry air also come in removing moisture from the inside of the bag and not causing condensation?

I know this is going to fall on gamemanico's blind eyes and deaf ears, so this is for those who may have a genuine interest, understanding and acceptance of what scientific research has been done on CD/DVD longevity.

BTW, I'm sure this has been linked before. My emphasis.

"Different optical media products react to various exposure conditions in very different ways, depending on the stability of the materials used in the recording and substrate layers, and the relative sensitivity of the recording layer to the effects of heat, humidity, and light. Other factors that affect longevity are the quality of the manufacturing process; the amount and type of markings or labels attached; the compatibility of the media with the recording device and the quality of the initial recording; the age of the media at the time of recording; the storage conditions and the handling of the media during use. The relative effects of these multiple factors make predictions of the actual lifetime, or even average life expectancy, of these products difficult. This type of artificial aging testing only represents a broad estimate of the actual longevity of the media."

Source: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/sci...longevity.html

Ask at the site I linked!

Is dvd media longevity more related to the quality of materials and disc manufacturing and to lower storage conditions? How do you rate mdisc dvd verbatim? manufacturer and materials is principal longevity?

This is easily observed in a typical household freezer. Even in bags, ice crystals often form and grow over time. That moisture had to come from somewhere.

I'd read it. :)

Air is almost never dry, not even in the desert.

Yes, all of it.

GM...why are you asking us? Nobody here has a testing lab, at least to the best of my knowledge. All we can do is try to follow best practices, which we've repeated here over and over and over. As far as will a hole in the bag let moisture in or out, it depends entirely on how damp or dry the outside air is. If you live in a desert and there's a hole in the bag, any moisture will tend to escape. If you live in a swamp, as I do, and there's a hole in the bag moisture from outside will tend to get in. You can slow it down with packs of silica gel, but you're not going to stop it unless you invest in an air-conditioned hermetically sealed vault.

Once again (I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall):

1. Make multiple copies of your important DVDs. Use more than one type of disk to burn to. Verify the discs after burning to make sure that the data is intact.
2. Store the disks in a cool, dry place to the best of your ability.
3. If you don't have a dry place, your baggie and silica gel idea will at least slow the moisture penettration down. Test the bags before you use them: Blow air into them, seal the closure, then squeeze them (gently) while holding them up to your face to see if you can feel air leaking through a pinhole or to see if the bag deflates too easily.
4. If the bag is good, put your DVD into it with a packet of fresh silica gel. Store in the coolest place you have ready access to. Better yet, spread the storage around. Keep at least one copy of each disk off site, say at a relative's home.
5. Once a year or so, take each disk out and test it. If it plays and tests good, then dry the silica gel out by heating it in a warm oven for at least an hour (135C or 275F), then put the DVD and the dried silica gel back into a fresh bag...which you've tested for leaks as you did the original.
6. If the disc has gone bad, you should have other copies of the same disc available (you did follow my advice in step 1, didn't you?). Take a good one and burn additional copies; preserve them the same way.

If you do this and you still lose data, then it means that the gods were out to get you. There really is nothing more that I can recommend. You're asking for guarantees from people who don't even know you and your equipment setup. All I can tell you is what I would do with DVDs I was extremely concerned about. Do I actually do this? No. I take realistic precautions and there are some tapes/data which I would be very sorry to lose, but there is nothing in my family library which would completely ruin my life if I lost it. The memories in your own head are more important than the memories on your shelf, at least as far as I'm concerned.

But is the fact that a ziplock bag is closed and contains holes in the moisture and air will come in and condense moisture inside the bag? Is it different from storing discs without the ziplock bag or does it make any difference?


If DVD Media has good workmanship and good materials will it be more resistant to moisture and heat? How do you rate dvd misc verbatim? I own them

This really needs to be a drinking game, if it’s not already ...

That's one of those science myths, usually stated to discredit any experiments/etc done outside of so-called "labs".

What is a lab? I remember have this discussion way back in college.
What makes a lab from 50 or 100 years ago any different from your own home/office of today?
You can do quite bit from a home/office, under variables/constants you can control. In fact, many "labs" are nothing more than office/institutional space reserved for scientific research.

Only some things require special work spaces (and clothes/etc).

GM admittedly has a pretty crude setup, he can't control many of his variables. But I I know I can, and I've amassed quite a bit of optical research in the past 20 years.

Banging my head against a wall is more productive since at some molecular level I've made a change to it. :huh1:

I don't know how long you've been following the forums here and at videohelp and if you've read all the nonsense gamey has posted over the years, but I've read every post* of his (under his many alias) since he began his insanity at VH 6+ years ago.

*I really don't know why. At least at VH, I can help get him to stop posting under yet another alias (he's been banned there at least twice and has posted under at least four different user names), but here? The best I can figure (other than purposely punishing myself) is that someday I hope I'll see him accept the answers given and move on.

One of the regulars at VH, gonca even has a great sig inspired by gamey: "Is he gone?"

Edit: At one point at VH, I seriously thought one of the regulars there** was trolling under gamey's name because I couldn't believe anyone could be so dense and anal.

**lordsmurf was a prime candidate because he was actually nice to gamey, this was when he was still part Grumpy Smurf. His vast knowledge was still passed on, but with a more fatherly, rather than grandfatherly tone he has now. He's mellowed a lot! Truthfully, I miss the old grumpy/lord smurf.

Sorry. I see that you're volunteering to take over here. Have fun!

*EDIT*

At the risk of courting a nervous breakdown, I have one more bit of advice for GM: Buy the kind of silica gel which changes color. Typically it's blue if it's still fresh and dry, but then it turns pink if it gets saturated with moisture. Do that, and all you have to do is look in the bag. If the silica gel is blue, your disk is dry...regardless of whether there's a microscopic pinhole in the bag letting moisture leak in or not. If the silica gel is pink (or whatever color it's designed to change to), then you need to put it in the oven and dry it out and put it back in with your disk in a fresh bag.

The men in the little white suits should be knocking on my door in about fifteen minutes.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a myth, but I think laboratory conditions and the scientific method are seen as two necessary requirements for scientifically valid results, there are circumstances where they're not.

As ls has stated, his non laboratory results and knowledge are scientifically sound and valid since it's verifiable and reproducible by numerous others.

One of the (many) problems that gamey has is that he's asking for the testing of the equipment/methods, and the testing of the test equipment/methods, and the testing of the testing of the test equipment/methods, ad nauseam. :screwy:

Ahh...I've even too much thought and put too much effort into this thread and gamey is loving the attention. Gotta stop! :smack:

Okay...one more! :D

"But, but...that allows light to get to the discs and 5 seconds of light shortens the life of the DVD by how much???" :huh1:

By five seconds, of course. So only do it once a year. Better yet, do it at night using infrared light and military-grade night vision goggles. Oops, those don't see color (voice of experience, here). Maybe if it's done by candlelight...?

Either GM's discs are already bad, or else they're going to take center stage in the next remake of Sleeper.

Nope. Just addressing/correcting things I see. :)

Really? :P
I was actually afraid that I've gotten too grumpy at times, between having to more aggressively counter Youtube baloney/nonsense, sounding more like orsetto (the resident VH curmudgeon) when it comes to negativity on hardware availability, less time, and overall poorer health (compared to 10 years ago).

gamemaniaco has/had some good questions, some mundane, hidden even, though admittedly bookended by the absurd at times. But he's also not the only forum member that does this, just the only one that has stuck around for more than a year. Even now, there are forum members here, newbies, that are questioning if 1+1=2 and why not 3, in addition to asking if I'm sure I'm sure, and then asking questions that were already answers many times in other threads just last month. But that's why the forum is here. You have questions, we have answer. It really is an FAQ!

I laughed so hard at this, and could not stop. Glad I wasn't drinking when I read this. I'd thankfully just put down my water. :laugh:

Is the ziplock and silica gel bag good or bad for conserving dvd media? i keep the dvd media inside ziplock with silica gel 1 week ago and the silica is still a little blue, i can't guarantee if the ziplock bag has any holes so i asked if the zip bag contains any holes moisture condensation will occur inside the zip bag?

Arrgh...you guys keep bringing me back! :P

Nah...you had orsetto and every one else beat in the days of early gamey!. I wasn't the only one who would jump into a thread just to assure the poster that they weren't the only one you snapped at (with justification). :salute:

I can't wait until all the teeth are gone and you have to gum the posters!

You started to mellow before you got sick and really mellowed when you came back. Both digitalfaq and videohelp weren't the same without you! :depressed:

Edit: At first I used to think, "Who does this guy think he is?" after you chomped on me a few times, then and now, but soon realized..."Hey, he's right!".

I'm looking forward to the day all your teeth are gone and your have to gum the posters! :laugh:

...Oh wait, that didn't come out right! :D

The problem here is also that gamey requests info for his locale. Well, I'm here, not there, so not happening. That would need a lab capable of significantly altering humidity/temps over the long-term experiment period, and that's something we can't do from home/office. Special labs with special equipment/conditions are absolutely required at times.

Scientific method is important.

One of my pet peeves is when people misuse the word "theory". For example, regardless of my/your religious beliefs, evolution is a theory, creationism is not. Evolution is based on biology, geological and anthropological finds/evidence, hypothesis, experiment, to arrive at that theory. If/when new information is found, it's updated as needed. Creationism is just "gee, I think this instead". You can believe in it all you want, but at no time is it actually a theory. It's not science. I don't even think creationism qualifies as a hypothesis. (Not to stray too much, but why not just say God made evolution happen? Seems easier to me.)

Anyway, that mentality heavily seeped into DVD media in the 2000s, which is what led to myths about media, some of which persist to this day, and some of which have thankfully gone away. No hypothesis, no controlled experiments, just jump straight from uncontrolled experiment to conclusion (based on nothing, therefore not theory).

Scientific method really matters most, and the location of it (lab/etc) is just part of that method.

What always amuses me is people that hear that "UV light is bad", then somehow condense that into "light is bad", and then make the asinine claim that "if light is bad, why doesn't the DVD player ruin the disc?" This reminds me of people that think global warming (more accurately: climate change) is myth because it's cold outside one day. The same people are conveniently nowhere to be found when it's 100+ outside, and the temp sets record highs.

Media was designed for use with the infrared spectrum.

-- merged --

To add to the last post, for an example of how the scientific method gets applied, look at Verbatim's MCC/MKM media.

To arrive at the 95-99% burn success rate, that's really just simple experiment and tallying the data.

For the longevity of MCC/MKM, it requires controlled (sometimes semi-controlled) conditions for experiment, then conclusions based off the finds. The findings need to be reproduceable to arrive at a meaningful conclusion. Some experiments are based on hypothesis, to see what happens. From that, you can arrive a theory of longevity, though also with caveats such as storage conditions.

For years now, we've also seen wild speculation, unfounded baseless nonsense, as to why XYZ location of production is bad. In whole, every location has been deemed bad at some point: Singapore, Taiwan, India, UAE. Every 3rd-party manufacturer location has been deemed bad: CMC, MBI, Prodisc, FTI. But the truth of the matter lies in the science, and how the media is produced.

There's more to it, but that's a good overview. :)

I would say quality disks on different media would be your best defence, as well as backups on other types of media. I would say go for 3 Types: (MCC/Verbatim / TY / M-Disc), and keep a copy on HDD and backed up on cloud storage, and if you are as paranoid as you come across to be, another HDD stored at someone else's house.

The only solution to not losing your data is multiple copies spread-out.

To the one who mentioned space:

Sod optical media, a nice gold plated record is bound to be the best solution ;) Probably one of the last relics of our current society that will outlast our modern world flying through space.

I know you're trying to be helpful, but the use of multiple types of backups have been suggested and discussed many, many times in gamey's numerous threads. Just trying to prevent him from going into another "MCC/Verbatim / TY / M-Disc good?" posting frenzy.

And yes, he is definitely paranoid and obsessed with preserving this precious videos and data, including copies of vintage games, 99% of which is available and better preserved on the net through numerous sites. :depressed:

Look at the titles of his past thread and you'll quickly see the what I'm talking about.