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Have you ever experienced disc rot?

Have you ever experienced disc rot?

  • Yes (1-3 games)

    Votes: 18 14.1%

  • Yes (4+)

    Votes: 7 5.5%

  • No

    Votes: 103 80.5%
  • Total voters
    128
I think I had one Saturn game go bad before. But that's about it amongst hundreds of physical PS1, Saturn, and PS2 titles. And also haven't had a cartridge fail across hundreds of various games.
 
Never had disc rot. Not in my movie collection (which is pretty huge right now) or my PlayStation collection (which I've sold most of it). I feel it's a myth. Maybe if you store your games and movies in a damp cellar or something, but if you store it properly it ain't gonna happen.
 
I have games going back to the PS1 I still play. Granted I have not replayed all of them, but I have never run into any issues when I do pop any of them in to play.
 
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.
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I mean Sega Saturn games are notorious for disc rot but those disc, even back then, felt low quality.
 
Twice and weirdly both were 3DO games. None of my other systems(oldest i have is PCE CD-ROM^2) have had any issues.

Now the format I have had the most problems with is fucking HD-DVD. I've had a ton of those go bad
 
DownLikeBCPowder said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yeah WAY back I had a loose bag of AOL discs kept mostly for the covers and sleeves, in the garage. After years, some of the discs didn't look so good on garage clean out day.

But I have CDs kept inside from even before AOL existed and they're still fine, and I'm not strict about climate control either. Made it this far usually in a cardboard box but I changed to plastic bins. The sleeves/manuals/etc are also susceptible to humidity and mold, and cartridge boards that get corroded. Between the cart, packaging and manual the CD beats them all.

As soon as you start handling them though the CD is fragile and the cart is a tank.
 
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Only once, on a few old PS1 games and it was purely due to bad storage. I had left them in an inproperly sealed container and in a damp storage unit, when I came to open them the moisture had clearly destroyed them and much else of the stuff I hadi in the container.

If games are dry stored properly in their OG cases it is not gonna be an issue for decades
 
Nope. I got both years old movies and games that read well to this day. At worst, I've experienced overscratched CDs that weren't readable.

The whole disc rot thing really seems like an edge/extreme case scenario of severe negligence. I've seen weird threads on /v/ about it. I'm almost willing to believe its a coordinated guerrilla marketing psyop/ploy, trying to make it seem more prevalent than it is, in order to push people over towards digital. They can't exactly force or intimidate you into doing it, so they choose to manipulate/herd you into it instead.
 
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Yes, recently going back through 20+ year old department archives, many discs were suffering from rot, most completely unreadable.

These were all burned by cops though and stored in not the best conditions.

Professionally pressed discs? Never, I was actually just looking at some I own from the 90s.
 
Laptop1991 said:
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
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It's almost like they want you jumping on a service. Entropy is a thing, sure, but I have never once seen it happen.
 
I have not for anything I have purchased new. I think you would need to abuse the disc in some way like leaving it out in the sun or something. Some of my burned discs have had issues with reading, but I barely burn discs anymore.
 
Killer8 said:
Disc rot is an internet meme that barely ever happens, intended to discredit physical media (but fails).
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The good vibes inherent to 5" optical discs act as a firewall between the fragile data impregnated film and the ever encroaching buzzsaw of entropy. Really if there was ever a case to make for physical media it would be this.
 
I had countless games from the '90s that stopped working (or at least started giving more and more troubles reading without errors) even before the digital market was a well-established thing on PC.
I keep the boxes on a shelf just for the sake of collecting them and I haven't touched one of them in years but at this point I would be almost surprised if any of them worked properly.
 
Happens all the time with 4k bluray media. Especially over 20-disc box sets. You can find hundreds of threads about discs skipping or not reading properly on the blu-ray.com forums (same issue often happens to dozens, so a batch of bad presses are a thing).
 
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I posted this in another thread, but I remembered recently that several of my 360 games were in a cardboard box in my attic, and it gets very hot and humid where I live.

I dropped a few into my Series X just to test them, and wouldn't you know it? They ran just fine.
 
I installed MGS4 on my PS3 last year just for shits and giggles, that's a disc produced in 2008, almost 20 years ago.

Installed the whole thing without any issues. This is with the patch where you can install the whole thing.
 
KingdomHeartsFan said:
I have over a thousand physical games, many of them used so they've had multiple owners, never once had disc rot.
Click to expand...
Same!

When I first heard about disc rot, I was nervous since I do have a lot of disc based games, but over time buying, selling and collecting literally thousands of disc-based games, I've never seen it.

On a similar note, I'm also shocked at how often NES/Famicom batteries are still working. I would say 90% of the time I pick up a NES/Famicom game that has battery back up, there are previous saves still present and saving still works.
 
Most disc rot issues are due to bad mastering or extremely humid environments. Worse case I've read about were all the HD-DVDs produced by a certain hollywood studio: by this point all of them are unreadable.
 
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Yes. I lost a handful of PS2 games that were on those blue CD's from early in the console's lifecycle to disc rot. I've also lost quite a few CD's and DVD's to it, but the last time was at least 20 years ago.
 
Never had disc rot, dating all the way back to DVDs and music CDs from the 90s.

Assuming the discs were properly mastered at the factory, my understanding is that as long as you take decent care of your discs (e.g. keep them stored in their case when not in use, keep them away from humidity, etc.), then they should last for a lifetime.
 
I've only experienced disc rot with burnable CD-Rs that were stored in very poor conditions for years, never with factory pressed CDs.
 
simpatico said:
My Sega Saturn FB group has had a few recently. Almost like they were all on the same timer
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My Panzer Dragoon Saga Disc 3 has disc rot. The other three discs are completely fine, as are the rest of my games and extensive collection of game soundtracks.
 
All my discs are fine, except the WiiU.
GAF originally had a thread on it. I checked, and there were several titles where light shines through random pinholes.
Something is off about WiiU discs in general, they even have a different feeling when handling
 
I have, with one music CD and three old CD-R's I burned with data on them a very long time ago.
 
ReBurn said:
Yes. I lost a handful of PS2 games that were on those blue CD's from early in the console's lifecycle to disc rot. I've also lost quite a few CD's and DVD's to it, but the last time was at least 20 years ago.
Click to expand...
Are you sure that wasn't an issue with the disc reader? Some of them really struggled with the blue discs.
 
Never had it with games, but I did have it with some music cds in my car.

The hot weather in the summer absolutely ruined them over the years. Just keeping them indoors with some AC does a lot to preserve.
 
Dual layer dvd's are particularly prone to it, single layer not so much. I'd imagine Bd's the same as its the glue reacting that causes the rot.

Burned media is very variable, depends on media quality, burn speed, the state of the writer on top of usual no-no's like exposure to UV.

Actual rot is easy to spot on visual inspection, shows as light shadowy blotching. UV damage usually shows as change to the dye colour.
 
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