OTOH, I've heard stories about short lifetimes of
homebrewed CDs also. At the moment, I believe even professionals
and governments are having trouble trying to find a long-lasting
medium
for preserving data over decades and maybe centuries. The only long-
lasting recordable media holds far too little data--think phonograph
records! (Chiseling in rock works too.)
A lot of us--I definitely include myself--have been very sloppy about
caring for floppy media. It doesn't like dust or magnetic fields, for
instance, and I suspect it doesn't like direct sunlight (the heat)
either. But I am far from sure that this is the whole story. Old
magnetic tape doesn't store very well either. I found a cassette
that's probably 30 years old, and all the treble is gone. I'll bet
there's
nothing over 500 hertz on the tape. Maybe not even that high.
Of course, tape is wound on itself, and that can't help.