If you are talking about CD-R discs to archive image files, the most secure and long lasting are Gold/Gold, so named because they have a gold coating top and bottom. The very few retail stores that have Gold/Gold CD-R discs usually sell them at a premium price. If you are willing to buy in higher quantities the per blank disc price is very reasonable at on-line wholesale suppliers of disc products like: http://www.cdr4less.com

TY, I will look for those, do you know how long the archival is known to last, and if I put them on a CD-R disk will that disk be able to be read down the road on different cd/rom dvd/rom drives?

There is no real objective scientific test of how long Gold/Gold CD-R disks will last in storage, but estimates run from 75 to over a hundred years. Ordinary non-metal coated CD-R discs can deteriorate from dye fading rather rapidly.

The International standards governing all forms of disc recording are designed to be backward compatible for all media. For instance the earliest, oldest music CD's can be played on the newest DVD players. Disc recording is all accomplished on the basis of one continuous international standard, and one of the biggest industries in the world depends on that consistency for the entire music, movie and information recording and retrieval to be viable.

Wether the CD last 100 years or not is probably not material. Will you be able to buy a device in 100 years that will read a CD created today? Probably not. If you want to keep a library of digital photos then you will probably need to refresh the storage medium every few years to keep up with changes in technology. On that basis, I store my stuff either on large hard drives or cheap CDs. In a few years, the CD's will get copied to current media.

I think you are quite misguided. The CD/DVD standard "Book" is rigorously managed and regulated internationally to ensure backwards compatibility and to guarantee all discs of every kind and age will be playable. It is not just computer storage, but all of music, and movies as well as corporate data, education programs, etc., etc., that involves billions and billions of dollars affecting every economy in the world that relies on the CD/DVD standard.

I have some of the very first commercial CD's made, and they read and will play on the most advanced drives available today.