(ISO: Geneva) -- The new International Standard ISO/IEC 10995:2008 specifies an accelerated aging test method for estimating the life expectancy for the retrievability of information stored on recordable or rewritable optical disks.

This international standard provides a methodology that includes the testing of newer, currently available products. This test includes details on the following formats: DVD-R/-RW/-RAM, +R/+RW and it may be applied to additional optical disk formats with the appropriate specification substitutions.

ISO/IEC 10995 covers the following:

• stress conditions
• assumptions
• ambient conditions
• evaluation system description
• specimen preparation
• data acquisition procedure
• data interpretation.

The methodology includes only the effects of temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH). It doesn’t attempt to model degradation due to complex failure mechanism kinetics, nor does it test for exposure to light, corrosive gases, contaminants, handling, and variations in playback subsystems. Disks exposed to these additional sources of stress or higher levels of T and RH are expected to experience shorter usable lifetimes.

 …