Pill-Popping CDs?

Finally, several weeks ago, we learned that under certain conditions CDs can be destroyed by fungi eating the reflective layer within the CD sandwich! While the CD's manufacturer categorized this event as "a freak incident caused by extreme weather conditions," South African reader Brandon Harrison suggests that this isn't such an improbable event after all:

"In a discussion regarding the CD-eating-bug article with a friend who is a specialist in the area of corrosion, he mentioned to me that such an occurrence is not unusual at all.

This phenomenon is known as MIC (Microbiologically Induced Corrosion), and it's well known in fields such as the petrochemical industry, [although] in the IT field, it seems that the possibility of something like this occurring has seemingly been ignored or overlooked. One would think that CD manufacturers would have highlighted the correct storage of CD media to ensure that loss of information does not occur.

Many people, including myself, have thought of CD's as being indestructible, and have backed up sensitive data on this media thinking that it will be around for many years to come. I cannot help but think back to an article you had a few years ago, on how media keeps changing, and how somewhere down the line you may want to recover something from an old tape [or other media], only to find out that you cannot read the data due to the media having become unreadable, or because the latest hardware [or operating system] no longer supports that device."

Thanks Brandon. Indeed, for really critical data, it makes sense to back it up onto several different kinds of media, stored in different locations.

But this MIC problem is interesting -- I mean, who would have ever thought that we might have to give an ailing CD an antibiotic...?

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