Does your game library suffer from Disc rot?

Gotta love all the people going "i have a bazillion of CD games dating from 20 years and they're all perfect!".
Sure they are... yeah right, I sure believe you've just properly checked 'em and played 'em all to completion in the last year . That is human behavior for you haha.

You do have disc-rot affected games if you've got a decent sized collection sorry man. You just don't know how to check for that. Dreamcast games especially are a bitch, as are Duo'CD and Saturn's in a somewhat smaller way, PSX games are less affected in my experience but they're also the hardest to check 'cause the pins are blue-ish on black. Loading a game to the menu or the first level doesn't mean it still works. Music skipping or a problem on later levels might probably arise.

Sorry, it sucks and it's the reason I mostly stopped collecting cd-based games, once a few expensive games started having problems I was done with it, Mint, brand-new sealed Saturn games, mind you.
 
I lost Bushido Blade to this. I bought it off a cousin years ago and it worked fine. Over time though, the PS1/2 simply stopped reading the disc.
 
Valkyrie Profile. :(

Actually that could've just been mistreatment, and I have the PSP version now though it'd be nice to get the PS1 original up on the PSN, but apparently SE's run by monkeys when it comes to getting some of their games on DD.
 
Spring-Loaded said:
I lost Bushido Blade to this. I bought it off a cousin years ago and it worked fine. Over time though, the PS1/2 simply stopped reading the disc.
Click to expand...

You say it with such rigor, as if it died from cancer.
My condolences.
 
Dash Kappei said:
You do have disc-rot affected games if you've got a decent sized collection sorry man. You just don't know how to check for that. Dreamcast games especially are a bitch
Click to expand...
Yeah... no. It's not hard to avoid disc rot. Just store them in a cool, dry place away from any direct light sources.

Avoid storing them in your bedroom, near a bathroom or by the kitchen, since those areas can have pretty high humidity levels. If you live in a small apartment, just opening your windows a couple of hours everyday does a lot to dissipate humidity (unless you live in a tropical armpit). Technically, you're supposed to take the booklets out of the cases since that can trap moisture, but i haven't and hasn't seemed to have had an effect on them. Maybe it shortened the life of the disc by a couple of years or even a decade, but these discs will probably be still in great condition for 50+ years.
By storing them in their case, you're already keeping them safe from constant air circulating. Keeping them in a bookcase blocks it even more.
Storing them in a box is iffy, since you can trap moisture with them, so you'd want to open the box and its cases every 6 months or so to air them out. Of course, doing this can also mean you might trap moisture in them again... soooo... you need to be routine about that.

I amassed a ton of games last gen, in the hundreds, and none of them suffer from disc rot. I've known about disc rot since the 90s, so i knew how and where to store my stuff. Almost any damage done to the discs is because i lent them to friends/siblings or just accidents, and scratches are pretty easy to fix.
I used to check all my discs every year or so when doing cleaning or rearranging stuff, but this thread reminded me and i checked through my old collection and saw no issues.

Disc rot is why i avoid buying used discs. Even new sealed stuff is suspect, as that article mentions, since you don't know how those people stored their games and movies.

LiK said:
Never heard of this but I might need to check my collection. Pretty good excuse to sell my games that I can play digitally.
Click to expand...
If you take care of your collection, it can outlast the company you buy digital copies from and even you.

Plastic naturally decomposes, but hard plastics can last for centuries without much deterioration. The metals and dyes used on discs are what you should be most worried about.
 
Ugh, I'm not sure tbh, I have something like 100 PSX game so I'd need to test them all to know... :(

I tested them all though when I got them at first...almost all...

This kind of shit makes me all paranoid.
 
Just checked my PS1, Saturn and DC games. Sonic Adventure seems to be the only title in my entire library with this issue, thankfully.

I should check to see if it runs.
 
Dude.
You are making me freak out.
I can't even see my whole collection because it is in another country.
DUDE WHY YOU GOTTA BE LIKE THIS
 
Not too worried. Just checked a stack of old, exposed demo discs that are still unaffected. Discs are pretty resilient if you're not using them as coasters.
 
I suppose my copy of Tales of Vesperia suffered this fate. I've tried using the Game Doctor on it and sent it to a disc repair company in hopes of the disc getting read by my Xbox. No dice whatsoever. I suppose I'll have to pony up 30 bucks eventually and get the digital version from Games on Demand.
 
Aw, damn.

Did a second check of my Saturn stuff just to be sure, and Megaman X4 and Panzer Dragoon seem to have it. Both seem to work fine, though.
 
sn00zer said:
There has got to be some sort of spray to coat the things and stop this...right?...RIGHT?!?!?!
Click to expand...

I believe there are a couple of disc covers and sprays you can use, but they're only meant for top loading players. Even then, it can damage the player and won't stop the disc from rotting if they're exposed to long term humidity.

Like i said in my other poster, if you store your collection in a cool, dry place, it can last you a life time.
Disc rot and other issues is pretty easy to avoid... unless you live in a tropical area.
 
great, here's something else to get OCD about with my collection, thanks OP

Satchel said:
Ok I'm shitting bricks.

So do I sell my discs now and replace those games digitally?
Click to expand...

yo ill give you $25 for suikoden 2 right now, but if you wait till next year it's gonna be rotten and ill only give you $20 or so
 
Yes, I have a bunch of Sega CD games with this problem. I haven't noticed any issues with games for other consoles (PS1, Saturn, newer systems), aside from discs that never worked at all and thus might have been killed by scratches and not rot/holes, but Sega CD... yeah, definitely. I have Sega CD games which won't work anymore because of this.

Oh, I do have a couple of Dreamcast discs that look like that as well, and also don't work, but I don't know if it's rot or scratch damage... I got them this way, and they never worked, so I have no idea if it was damage or rot.

I also have some Gamecube game discs which stopped working and still don't work, even after professional scratch-repair work, but you can't see light through some of the non-working discs, so if it's rot, it's imperceptible damage...
 
Yup. When I moved recently I went through some of my old PC games, and two of them (out of probably 100) had definite signs of disc rot.

Makes me worry about my classic DVD collection, the future of my Blu and PS3 collection etc..
 
DidntKnowJack said:
I've got CD's that go back to the 80's. I've never had disc rot.
Click to expand...

Yeah, this.
Except when "disc rot" means "a scratch in the silver/gold layer on top of the CD/DVD" then yeah, I had that problem with some super cheap CD-Rs.

I have a good 100+ disc based games as well as 300+ or so movies on DVD and BluRay, never had a single rot.
Some of my music CDs go way back to the 80s or at least very early 90s, those still work like a charm.
 
I've had a few older games go the way of disc rot.

Unfortunately it'll start happening even more in the next 10-15 years. Disc and bit rot will, in time, kill entire collections. Thank god for people backing the roms up.
 
Wow this thread is depressing. I wonder is my copy of Shenmue has this problem. Only DC game I had issues with but always figured it was a DC hardware issue (laser).

Aside from batteries dying in NES/SNES/GBA carts (which can be fixed) are there data loss worries from cart games? I believe re-writable EEPROM(a lot of N64/GBA games) and Flash (GBA and memory cards?) can eventually loose the availability to save (over crazy long periods though I think). What else? C'mon I can take it!
CrisisPoor said:
Will this affect PSP UMDs as well?
Click to expand...
Good question. I thought PSP UMDs didn't have a coating over the disc. If disc rot is due to caught air or contaminates under the coat than they may not have the issue (though the lack of a coat is a problem too, perhaps a bigger one).
 
Dash Kappei said:
Gotta love all the people going "i have a bazillion of CD games dating from 20 years and they're all perfect!".
Sure they are... yeah right, I sure believe you've just properly checked 'em and played 'em all to completion in the last year . That is human behavior for you haha.
Click to expand...
I love how you think you know the condition of my games more than I do. And not just games - music cd's going back almost 30 years. I've had optical media probably longer than you've been alive and I've yet to come across disc rot.

All you people are doing is freaking out about nothing. I'm not saying you'll never have this problem - after all optical media has always been regarded as having a limited shelf life. They used to think CD's would only last about 20 -25 years, but you can whip out the oldest CD known to man and chances are it works just as it did the day it was pressed. It's likely the vast majority of these discs will be going strong long after we're gone.

There are even studies that suggest CD's and other optical media will last anywhere between 50 to 200 years. And most problems arise when the discs have been damaged in some way - not just sitting on a shelf in someone's library. And writeable and re-writeable discs are the ones most prone to disc rot.

So ask yourself - If this is such a widespread and impending problem why is it so many people never even heard of disc rot before? Stop flipping over this non-issue. Your games are most likely fine and will continue to be.
 
Oh wow :/
I've hundreds of PC-Engine CD and PS games and I've never checked that...
Good thing I've started making back-up copies, but now I'm worried my HDD fails on me :(
 
MvmntInGrn said:
Aside from batteries dying in NES/SNES/GBA carts (which can be fixed) are there data loss worries from cart games? I believe re-writable EEPROM(a lot of N64/GBA games) and Flash (GBA and memory cards?) can eventually loose the availability to save (over crazy long periods though I think). What else? C'mon I can take it!
Click to expand...

I think I remember reading a long time ago that the EEPROM in N64 games can only rewrite data (aka save) a measly... 1 million times. So yeah that's probably fine.
 
I'll probably buy an external HDD next week-end, my entire PC-engine and Saturn collections are backed-up, but I only have something like 20 PSX games done out of something around a hundred games, there's a lot of work ahead for me it seems. ^^'

At least if some suffers from this in the future, I'll have them safe digitally. So at least I'll be able to play via emulators (like I'm doing already so yeah...) with the game's copy on the side to feel legit. :lol

At the same time I'll check up all my CDs for this...horrendous stupid fucking filth. :/
 
All my games are safely and vertically tucked away from sunlight and elements :3

Not a single damaged disc that I can tell. In fact the only discs I don't care about are burned discs that I still have access to the source data for archived on an external hard drive.
 
Wow. I wonder if that's what happened with my copy of Shenmue, Albert Odyssey and a couple of others.

But yeah, ever since I read up on degradation of batteries in some gba games, I forced myself to finally finish my old game backlogs and cleared out xbox, dreamcast, saturn, gba and the gamecube backlogs in no time. I'm currently working on the ps1 and only got 3 games left and 3 on the Wii as well. I'm extremely fucking dedicated to mopping them up before selling them and the consoles.

Nothing lasts forever. Period.
 
luxsol said:
Yeah... no. It's not hard to avoid disc rot. Just store them in a cool, dry place away from any direct light sources.

Avoid storing them in your bedroom, near a bathroom or by the kitchen, since those areas can have pretty high humidity levels. If you live in a small apartment, just opening your windows a couple of hours everyday does a lot to dissipate humidity (unless you live in a tropical armpit). Technically, you're supposed to take the booklets out of the cases since that can trap moisture, but i haven't and hasn't seemed to have had an effect on them. Maybe it shortened the life of the disc by a couple of years or even a decade, but these discs will probably be still in great condition for 50+ years.
By storing them in their case, you're already keeping them safe from constant air circulating. Keeping them in a bookcase blocks it even more.
Storing them in a box is iffy, since you can trap moisture with them, so you'd want to open the box and its cases every 6 months or so to air them out. Of course, doing this can also mean you might trap moisture in them again... soooo... you need to be routine about that.
Click to expand...
What if I live in a naturally humid area
 
I don't keep that many old games but some PS disks are still OK, what I can say about Xbox360 games. Really what's wrong with them? I know about boiling thing, still find it weird, being comparatively new and all.
 
I never lost a game to disc rot, but a couple of DVDs went. Both MGM ones from the same line of classic re-releases. The bottom of the disc looked like someone had breathed on it and misted it up, but it was physical damage that couldn't be wiped away.
 
DidntKnowJack said:
I love how you think you know the condition of my games more than I do. And not just games - music cd's going back almost 30 years. I've had optical media probably longer than you've been alive and I've yet to come across disc rot.

All you people are doing is freaking out about nothing. I'm not saying you'll never have this problem - after all optical media has always been regarded as having a limited shelf life. They used to think CD's would only last about 20 -25 years, but you can whip out the oldest CD known to man and chances are it works just as it did the day it was pressed. It's likely the vast majority of these discs will be going strong long after we're gone.

There are even studies that suggest CD's and other optical media will last anywhere between 50 to 200 years. And most problems arise when the discs have been damaged in some way - not just sitting on a shelf in someone's library. And writeable and re-writeable discs are the ones most prone to disc rot.

So ask yourself - If this is such a widespread and impending problem why is it so many people never even heard of disc rot before? Stop flipping over this non-issue. Your games are most likely fine and will continue to be.
Click to expand...

Thank you. There is a lot of freaking out here over nothing. Any commercially pressed disc will have an insane shelf life if taken care of. All of my Sega CD games still work without issue. CDRs/CDRWs, and their DVD equivalent, are what you have to worry about. All of the backups of my work from about 10 years ago are suffering bit rot because of CDRs.
 
dvd.jpg

just rub a banana on it.
 
RedNumberFive said:
Thank you. There is a lot of freaking out here over nothing. Any commercially pressed disc will have an insane shelf life if taken care of. All of my Sega CD games still work without issue. CDRs/CDRWs, and their DVD equivalent, are what you have to worry about. All of the backups of my work from about 10 years ago are suffering bit rot because of CDRs.
Click to expand...

I think this obsession with cloud storage has prevented any decent home SAN solutions from becoming mainstream.

Been thinking of buying a blu-ray burner, to rearchive all my old work as well.
 
Well... I've still got my copy of Turning Point Fall of Liberty, does that count? I'm worried the other games next to it on my shelf are going to catch something just from the proximity.
 
Wow, thanks for ruining my evening.
I guess I know what I'll be doing tonight..

Seriously, this is really worrying. I guess at least with my Saturn stuff if it hasn't happened by now it probably isn't going to?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Disc rot already affects your physical game collection
2 3
107
6K
ArtHands replied
  • Poll
Xbox refugees, will you repurchase games from your Xbox library on another platform?
Poll Platform  2
83
4K
DanielG165 replied
Disc rot and the Wii U
2
70
7K
LRKD replied
Assassin’s Creed Shadows being added to Game Pass Ultimate Library Streaming
47
2K
balls of snow replied
Nintendo has added two more Game Boy games to its Switch Online retro library.
22
1K
Spukc replied
Top Bottom