Back Up Your Back-ups?

According to an article on Yahoo! News, burned CDs may have a lot shorter lifespan than normal CDs. I don't have a business with terabytes of crucial information stored on CDs, but I do have important documents, family photos, MP3s and a lot of other things I'd like to keep safe.

I've been burning CDs for about 4 or 5 years now, and so far I haven't had any problems. After reading this article, I went back and pulled out some of my oldest CDs, and had no problems getting to the data stored on them.

With more and more people buying and downloading digital music and movies, taking digital photos, and storing important documents in digital form, it's important that they be able to safely store that data long-term. Could you imaging popping in the CD with the pics from your wedding, or your child's birth, only to find out the data was corrupt?

Hopefully it's not going to be a big issue, but it's definately something I'm going to keep my eye on from now on. My oldest burned CDs seem to be fine, but a lot of the CDs I've burned since were much cheaper quality. I hope it's not a problem because honestly, I don't see magnetic tape back-ups in my future.