I got some really old hard-drives at home. Last year I tested a 42MB drive (dated to leave the manufacturer in 1990) ... worked just fine. At work we had a bit of fun with a 10MB hard-drive from 1986. It still works (powers up and spins, at least), but we don't have any controller's to plug it in... The real issue in this thread is not how long some people have had their data readable in cd's ... it's about the chances took when relying on cds as back-up media. It proves nothing if I have 30 working cds unless I test their performance one by one with a different drive than where they were burnt. Also putting a cd in drive and reading the contents is NOT enough to test the integrity - one needs to read all written bits and not just the TOC (Table of Contents). TOCs are stored in a different manner than the actual data and also in a different physical location in the cd. So if you see your zips and exes in the TOC, you still can't be sure they work unless you test their operability.