Preserving cultural heritage : a new approach to increase the life expectancy of optical discs

The past two decades have witnessed an exponential growth in the use of digital supports for data archiving. However, the expected lifetime of these supports is inadequate with respect to the actual needs of heritage institutions. In this paper, we address the problem of alleviating the effects of aging on optical discs. To solve this problem, we (a) experimentally recognize safe and critical areas of optical discs and (b) adopt an Adaptive Reed-Solomon (A-RS) code to increase their lifetime expectancy. More precisely, we reduce the error correction capability of the code in safe areas and increase it in critical areas. Interestingly, the approach adopted does not reduce the capacity of the discs but simply redistributes the error correction capability of the code itself. This adaptive approach helps to counteract the physical and chemical degradation of optical discs, thus increasing their lifetime expectancy.