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Have you ever experienced disc rot?

Have you ever experienced disc rot?

  • Yes (1-3 games)

    Votes: 25 15.0%

  • Yes (4+)

    Votes: 9 5.4%

  • No

    Votes: 133 79.6%
  • Total voters
    167
DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
During this debacle from Sony, I have seen a lot of people bring up disc rot. I have thousands of disc from CD Rom disc back in the mid 90s to current. I have never personally experienced it, even in my own burned disc. I don't think it's happening that often as used games are selling these old disc and there's not articles coming out that these disc just don't work.

I was curious if people at GAF have had their disc rot over time. If so, what conditions were the disc in?
 
My oldest cd game is ps1 xenogears copy but i don't have a ps1 anymore so i can't tell you.
Doesn't look or smell rotten tho.
 
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You have literal thousands of discs? That's a lot. Bet it looks nice if they are stacked in jewel cases on a shelf, like a library.

Never seen, or heard anyone having disc rot in the real world outside the internet.

Don't have a single disc of anything at home. Oh wait, no I have a God of War disc that came with my PS5, but that's it.
 
I have had several DVDs over the years with spots which I would presume is "rot" that can't be read anymore, either fully or partially. Though I believe all of them were stuff I burned myself and not official ones. Not sure it makes any difference or it was coincidence. That being said, I haven't used or inspected my collection in years, so there could potentially be more. I started collecting music and PC CDs in the early 2000s so maybe I do need to take a look at the older ones.
 
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MrRibeye said:
You have literal thousands of discs? That's a lot. Bet it looks nice if they are stacked in jewel cases on a shelf, like a library.

Never seen, or heard anyone having disc rot in the real world outside the internet.

Don't have a single disc of anything at home. Oh wait, no I have a God of War disc that came with my PS5, but that's it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I grew up on PC and inherited a lot of old PC games this way too. I sadly threw the big boxes away 20 years ago.
 
I once had a DVD box set of Tales from the Crypt (Cryptkeeper). After a few years, all the discs became cloudy and spotted. They could still be played, but it definitely didn't inspire much confidence anymore.
 
I have had thousands of physical games since the 80's. Never had disc rot. Sold off a lot, but always tested before making a listing.

It all depends on storage and packaging, is my opinion.
 
Just this one DVD I had which is a play I did in kindergarten, it's in pretty bad condition which sucks 'cause I've been wanting to see what that play was like for a while now
 
So far no. On disc I collected mostly for the PlayStation consoles and I assume Sony had one of the highest quality production between manufacturers. Then I have in much smaller numbers the Nintendo discs, but again I doubt they would have cheapened out on quality.

I'm more worried with movies where heard it's a more common issue.
 
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Disc rot is rather overexaggerated. A well stored CD or DVD could last up to 100 years or so. CD might be shorter. It will certainly last longer than Sony will keep the servers up for old consoles to let you redownload your games.
 
Sakura said:
Disc rot is rather overexaggerated. A well stored CD or DVD could last up to 100 years or so. CD might be shorter. It will certainly last longer than Sony will keep the servers up for old consoles to let you redownload your games.
Click to expand...

More than storage, i think it has to do with a couple of very particular factories producing certain DVD batches.
Blu-Ray discs and CDs (factory produced, not the ones you burn at home) are much much more resistant.
 
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Many of the music CD's I owned back in the 90's are dead. But they went through some hard conditions. Lived inside my car in a flipbook and some went on the sunvisor. Through freezing winters and baking summers.
Dead.
I eventually got a car that played music through a USB port. I bought a USB thumb drive loaded it up with music and that thing didn't last a year in the hot car plus the stick itself got hot while in the USB port. Lost some songs on that USB stick, some files got corrupted and the music played all skippy from the thumb drive. :(
I've got lots of DVD's I've burned myself that are no longer readable.

The only games I've owned that stopped working were Dreamcast games. It turned out that the disks themselves had gone bad and not the dreamcast laser. The disks looked pristine but still could not be read.
edit-I should point out that all my Dreamcast games were bought used. I never owned a Dreamcast back when it was new, only many years later, all used.

All my old PS2 games still work and I have even older Sega CD's that still work. Something about those Dreamcast games went bad.

As for Movies bought from the store, I don't know if they still work or not, they just sit on the shelf not being watched. But I suspect they all still work.
 
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Miles708 said:
More than storage, i think it has to do with a couple of very particular factories producing certain DVD batches.
Blu-Ray discs and CDs (factory produced, not the ones you burn at home) are much much more resistant.
Click to expand...
Yeah there have been cases where factories had bad batches with the glue holding the layers together.
But if your discs have already lasted this long, then probably the fabrication process was fine.
 
Have discs going back for every console gen that supported them, US or JP imports, haven't encountered any rot.
I store all physical stuff on shelving in a closet in a home with HVAC though.
 
I have several thousand games the oldest cd media I have is pc engine not had a single disk go bad. But they haven't been kept in humid conditions or extreme heat so that's probably had something to do. Plus most games I have are in cart format.

Personally nope not had a single game go bad.
 
One time, but then I went to the doctor and he gave me a topical cream to us--

Oh you said DISC rot.

Only on a few DVDs, at the layer change. Nothing else yet -- that I know of.
 
Found a bunch of old DVDs at work that didnt work. Rot or not, I don't know, but they were miscolored and not recognized by the reader.
 
I installed Starsiege Tribes 1 last night off of its original 1998 disc and it was perfect. I have burnable CDs I made 30 years ago that look and play perfectly. Thousands of discs have come and gone in my life and never not once did I ever see "disc rot". For me, it's a complete myth and I chalk it up to poor storage.
 
The oldest CD I have is the MCA release of the Star Trek IV sound track from 1986, and it still plays (just tested it lol)

Most issues I've had have been with burnt cds not lasting... but I think that was sort of accepted that they would or could have a shorter lifespan
 
No. I find the drives on my old systems go bad far before well-kept discs have issues.

My PS3 drive is toast, I ripped all my discs my PC and load them via CFW now from an internal SSD

Drive on my PS2 slim is still kicking, but I use it very sparingly....mostly load ISOs over ethernet via FCMB/PS2SMB

Drive in my Dreamcast still works and exclusively plays backup copies :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
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Every disc I've ever owned has rotted within one week of ownership. Praise Sony and the all-digital future.

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No, my cd's from the 90's still work, when they first came out in the 80's, meaning music ones, they said they last forever now the message is, they are going to degrade and become unuseable all the time lol
 
Technically I got it with very old 90s CDs I burned myself but that's expectable. On games never, though I know bit rot is real and that you must be very careful when buying Persona Q or Persona Q2 for 3DS.
 
The only common problems I had was with CD's from videogame magazines. Many of them were so shit quality they didn't even work properly straight out of the cardboard.

During the entire PS4 generation I had one game that refused to play, fortunately I was able to return it, who knows what that was since it was an unsealed copy of a relatively fresh game at the time.
 
I voted no because I've never experienced it with my personal collection or any disc that I've given care to.

However due to the late 90s and companies like AOL sending out nearly infinite free trial discs I had a gigantic collection of such discs and a few of these discs I exposed to unfortunate conditions such as humidity and heat (amongst other interesting experiments) and I did directly observe some of this disc rot on some of those items that were improperly kept.

Suffice to say I've seen it in action but I've never been concerned with or observed it on my personal collection branching back to the Sega CD. As far as I'm concerned it is a boogeyman.
 
I've had a few Xbox 360 games delaminate and became unreadable, and a couple of PS2 discs can could just not be read despite no visible scratches or damage.
 
no. not even on burned discs from 20 years ago.
I still have some burned CDs and DVDs from the early 2000s that still work
 
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No, not with my own stuff .
Still got music CDs from the late 80s/early 90s running without issue.
Over 20 year old DVDs and 10 year old blu rays. All working.

I had bought a few used DVDs a few years ago that looked iffy and didn't run well and about 2 used older BluRays that made problems.

So i assume it's first and foremost a storage problem. There may be some charges that are faulty to begin with but that's probably in the low single digital percentage.
 
None of my PS1, Saturn, PS2, GC, Wii or PS3 discs have any form of disc rot. And neither does any of my music either/

It's also overblown, reason disc rot happens is at the beginning they used shitty glue on the layers and that causes the disc rot. Even copy of Smashing Pumpkins - Gish is still in pristine condition and mine is from 1991 when it released.
Disc rot is far far overblown by people who have no idea what they're talking about
 
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