Does your game library suffer from Disc rot?

I had a copy of Midtown Madness explode in the CD drive once. I played it so much that the constant heat from the drive caused the disc to shatter.

Anyway, articles like this make me glad that emulation exists. Even if every single disc for these games is destroyed, the games themselves will live on.
 
My discs have had this but only my music CD's which I kept in a 100 cd binder style case have ever shown signs of wear. That was mainly due to them being in the hot car a lot.
 
Clockwork5 said:
dvd.jpg

just rub a banana on it.
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W-W-What..?
 
Everything will rot away unless it is backed up digitally. Entropy always wins.

Honestly for this among other reasons I'm thinking of selling my entire game collection to help pay for my kids' college education.

Something tells me it's a good time to get out.
 
Imbarkus said:
Everything will rot away unless it is backed up digitally. Entropy always wins.

Honestly for this among other reasons I'm thinking of selling my entire game collection to help pay for my kids' college education.

Something tells me it's a good time to get out.
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At least FINISH them damn backlogs. :(
 
Had this 50 cd stack spindle, stored for about 10 years. When I tried to use them, none of them worked. Apparently it's a bad idea to stack cd's in spindles.
 
LiquidMetal14 said:
My discs have had this but only my music CD's which I kept in a 100 cd binder style case have ever shown signs of wear. That was mainly due to them being in the hot car a lot.
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Like I posted earlier in this thread; does putting your cds/dvds/blu rays in a binder damage them at all ?

You're an exception since you placed them in a hot car (should never EVER do such a thing to anything or creature )
 
I have over 1200 games, with about 900 of them being disc-based games. There's no way at all I could possibly ever check them for rot. However, every one of them that I DO interact with plays perfectly every time I'm in the mood to play one of them, so so far so good! It's a relatively moderate environment here - mild humidity and never ourside of 60-75 degrees in the lower level room that houses the collection.

I've read about this before and have seen examples of it, but until I see it happen to any one of my own discs I'm not about to go on a "back up all the things" campaign out of fear!

Keep calm and carry on!
 
Tayaya said:
I have over 1200 games, with about 900 of them being disc-based games. There's no way at all I could possibly ever check them for rot. However, every one of them that I DO interact with plays perfectly every time I'm in the mood to play one of them, so so far so good! It's a relatively moderate environment here - mild humidity and never ourside of 60-75 degrees in the lower level room that houses the collection.

I've read about this before and have seen examples of it, but until I see it happen to any one of my own discs I'm not about to go on a "back up all the things" campaign out of fear!

Keep calm and carry on!
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Where do you live and how do you store your games ? I've mostly compartmentalized mine into a 300 plus binder,and stored them in a big shipping box in my garage that I believe is mostly cool and dry all year long (living in the west coast)
 
I've got quite an extensive retro catalogue so this scares me shitless.

Just checked about 40 of my most prized Japanese Saturn games and none of them seem to be affected. The only two that are are a copy of Gekirindan and Street Fighter vs XMen, both of which I bought in rather poor condition, so their previous life might have something to do with it.
My copy of Sega Rally Plus also seemed affected, but it turned out to be top damage that scraped a bit of the data part as well. Everything plays fine though. So far...
 
I despise optical media. My Game Boy Pocket will most likely outlive my future WiiU/PS4, and apparently their libraries too.
 
Does anyone have a clue what would cause this other than age? I Mean I would assume if stuff is kept in a controlled environment this type of thing wouldn't just happen?

I guess how do we prevent it from happening once you know it's a thing that happens.
 
Phenomic said:
Does anyone have a clue what would cause this other than age? I Mean I would assume if stuff is kept in a controlled environment this type of thing wouldn't just happen?

I guess how do we prevent it from happening once you know it's a thing that happens.
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High humidity and rough treatment of the discs. Perhaps temperatures too.
 
isual said:
Where do you live and how do you store your games ? I've mostly compartmentalized mine into a 300 plus binder,and stored them in a big shipping box in my garage that I believe is mostly cool and dry all year long (living in the west coast)
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Near Chicago, and I store them all in their original boxes or cases on the lower level of my house. It gets humid around here in the summer but the A/C runs all of the time and it stays pretty cool and dry downstairs. I don't check my discs for this though it's something I've been aware of for a long time. If I make the move to a more warm and humid climate someday, I may invest in a dehumidifier for the game room.
 
Never, ever, heard of this.

It is not something that will affect me really, but I can see this being an expensive disaster for collectors of older titles.
 
so we should have never left cartridges we can get carts now bigger than blu rays in capacity. or its time to go digital -_-
 
It's not like cartridges are eternal either, right? Emulation sites that are into archiving always claim that the printing process is time-limited.
 
I don't worry about it, your house could burn down while you're at work as well. If disc rot happens, there was nothing you could have really done anyways. We can't control time, manufacturing flaws, cheaper materials, or the air.

Just keep enjoying your games or the joy you get from collecting.
 
This is why emulation of older systems is so important from a preservation perspective. It's nice to think of physical games as eternal but as this thread shows games that aren't even 20 years old yet are succumbing to the elements. Hopefully as more people realize this in the future more emulators as good as BSNES will pop up for other systems.
 
Never heard of this today and now I'm worried about my PS1 games I have sitting in storage at home. Mostly the ones that I really want to stay in perfect condition or are obnoxiously hard to get replacements for.
 
Question for you guys - in the near future if I head home I may try to back up some of my old games with images.

What's the best choice? I typically use .iso when I play an old game but I've read that the .iso format has problems with playing back music files on the CD in Dosbox.

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/IMGMOUNT

Is bin/cue the way to go? I don't know much about the key differences in how the different disc image formats work.
 
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.
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Because people are uninformed, plain and simple. Most people are clueless about the most important issues in the world, so it's no shocker few have heard about freakin' disc rot... unless you're a serious collector. Plus, do you think the collectors' world would gain anything positive about spreading this info or list checks for disc-rot on eBay auctions or conventions sales? Ah!
And I wish I was that young dude, I had a Sony CDP-101 and I bet you don't even know what that is :/
I don't feel writing a long ass post when you didn't bother to read the article nor inform yourself. It's not a matter of conditions or how you keep your collection, I had plenty of disc rot cases with brand-new sealed collectibles for Saturn, Duo and Dreamcast, so basically I've paid more to get NEW... for nothing. I actually prefer a disc with a few scratches than one with disc rot now, at least mild scratches can be fixed.
 
inm8num2 said:
Question for you guys - in the near future if I head home I may try to back up some of my old games with images.

What's the best choice? I typically use .iso when I play an old game but I've read that the .iso format has problems with playing back music files on the CD in Dosbox.

http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/IMGMOUNT

Is bin/cue the way to go? I don't know much about the key differences in how the different disc image formats work.
Click to expand...

The .iso file format is generally intended only for data. In the vast majority of cases it'll do the job just fine for purposes of video game archival, but some games contain both game data as well as CD audio tracks, which the format isn't really equipped to support. The practice was reasonably common in the latter days of DOS games, which is probably why the DOSBox wiki sees fit to address it directly. You'll basically lose all audio track information on such a disc when it's ripped as a .iso file, which may or may not effect the ability to play an individual game.

When I archived all my discs I just ripped everything as bin/cue pairs to ensure that the full contents of every disc made the transition intact. It loses a bit of the purity of having a single file for each game, but that seemed like a small sacrifice to make for the guarantee that the disc image would be fully functional.
 
I keep my games in the original cases in my basement man cave with a dehumidifer so hopefully i wont run into this. I saw this disc rot article a while ago And checked hundreds of discs obsessively - i never found anything.
 
pizzaroll said:
What if I live in a naturally humid area
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SUX 4 U
Seriously, I'd invest in a dehumidifier if i were you. Air conditioners help too.
I live in San Diego, so it's frequently humid here (95% right now), but i have an air purifier on constantly. So i think that helps with the humidity.
Leaving windows open helps a lot in controlling humidity levels in the house, but not when its swampy.

isual said:
Like I posted earlier in this thread; does putting your cds/dvds/blu rays in a binder damage them at all ?
Click to expand...
Discs can warp over time, so leaving them in those binders can do damage, but it all depends on how you place the binder and how it's designed.
In addition, those binders can trap moisture inside and are sometimes made of materials that allows moisture to go through.
That guy who leaves his discs in this car inside his car is pretty lucky his discs still work, since that does quicken the deterioration of the plastic (heat is always bad for most materials), produces outgases that affects everything around it, and allows the discs to warp faster.

It's very easy to keep your stuff from deteriorating fast. You don't even have to be anal about it. As someone already posted, your discs can outlast you (and maybe your grandkids) and companies who run digital services. They'll surely outlast any HDD.
 
ixix said:
The .iso file format is generally intended only for data. In the vast majority of cases it'll do the job just fine for purposes of video game archival, but some games contain both game data as well as CD audio tracks, which the format isn't really equipped to support. The practice was reasonably common in the latter days of DOS games, which is probably why the DOSBox wiki sees fit to address it directly. You'll basically lose all audio track information on such a disc when it's ripped as a .iso file, which may or may not effect the ability to play an individual game.

When I archived all my discs I just ripped everything as bin/cue pairs to ensure that the full contents of every disc made the transition intact. It loses a bit of the purity of having a single file for each game, but that seemed like a small sacrifice to make for the guarantee that the disc image would be fully functional.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response. Makes sense. :)

I'm too lazy to check which games have CD audio and which don't. I might just end up making both .iso and .bin/.cue images for each game I have since my collection is quite modest.
 
I work for a company that archives data to CD and we learned about disk rot the hard way. A customer broke a disk and wanted us to retrieve the data from our backup disk from 10 years ago.

We arrived at our temperature controlled archive centre to find jewel cases full of clear plastic discs and glitter.

Now we store everything as ISOs on a mirrored storage array.
 
Darn...thankfully all of the disc games I have are easily replaced but I feel like checking them all now.

But I do take good care of them and I live in a very dry area so probably nothing worth worrying about...=D
 
I went on holiday a few years ago and a guy told me "Your disc will just get out of date", as in almost like food would, or how plastics rot etc. I thought he was just lying... dammit!
 
Bought a billy Joel CD years ago and one time I took it outit had some sort of growing mold on it. Cleaned it and put it back in the cd case, month after I took it out and it grew back. Made me paranoid as hell with my CD and DVD games/music/movies
 
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