The Stability of DVD Optical Disc Formats

Abstract

The desire to have a storage medium for digital information with a higher capacity than the CD has led to a growth in the use of DVD optical media. A single-layer DVD provides up to seven times more storage capacity than a CD and therefore makes it useful for the storage of larger digital files. However, due to some key structural differences between the DVD and CD formats, there are some unanswered questions with respect to the long-term stability of DVDs. This study examined the stability of a variety of movie DVDs, DVD±Rs, dual layer DVD+Rs, and DVD±RWs. These media were evaluated under accelerated aging conditions of 80°C and 85% relative humidity and by measuring error rate changes after four aging intervals of 21 days. It was demonstrated that erasable DVDs (DVD±RWs) and dual-layer recordable DVDs have fair and very poor stability respectively and should not be used if longevity of the optical media is required. On the other hand, the stability of recordable DVDs (DVD±Rs) ranged from very good to poor. Discs with good stability utilized a gold metal layer and a dye that was unaffected by the aging conditions. Recordable DVDs with a silver metal layer and less stable dye degraded quickly and cannot be recommended for the long-term storage of digital information.