Bit Rot

[digitalpress]

I have a presentation next week and one of my slides will address "bit rot". The concept is familiar enough and I think many who doubted this years ago have probably all been hit with a first-hand case of this data disease by now.

I've got some good examples of this going on in EPROM data (cartridge prototypes) but I have never personally experienced a CD with bit rot. I know I've seen or heard people in this community talk about it before.

Do you have any specific examples of this happen, and was there an obvious culprit (heat, humidity, excessive light, etc) that caused a once working disc to go bad without ever having been used in the interim?

[Parodius Duh!]

Ive never had a problem with carts or game cds. Only Audio CDs and DVDs Ive had rot, most likely due to cheap materials used to make the discs themselves.

[megasdkirby]

Yes, it has happened to me, but not with games, but with cheapass optical media.

In fact, ever since I purchased two BDRE drives on my computer, I've started to backup files extensively, specially when I encountered some of the first few CD's burnt to be pretty much screwed up with bitrot. These CD's are from the year 2000 or so, so yeah, they are old. Generic media doesn't help either, though to be honest, generic media isn't always generic as people think...

Anyway,I've noticed that the conditions in which the discs are located in play a very important role in bit rot development. In a sealed environment, with little or no humidity, bit rot was practically non-existent. But when exposed to the elements...bit rot was just ONE of the problems to plague optical media. Others include fungus, stains, obviously scratches, peeling from the label side...and much, much more.

I'm pondering about putting small silica packets in certain games/locations to help prevent this as much as possible. Or at least slow down it's progress.

[kai123]

Never had one before fail.

[treismac]

I have a Castlevania cart for the NES that has bit rot. The character falls right through the floor and dies even in the attract scene when you just let it play it self. No amount of cleaning fixed it so that is what I assumed it was.

Dude, make a video of this and post it to youtube, then drop us a link. I want to see this "bit rot" in action.

I've never heard of this before. While I'd hate for any of my carts to have bit rot occur to them unintentionally, I wouldn't mind purposely causing it to happen to a duplicate cart or two (I'm looking at you, Mario/Duck Hunts!). I really dig video games flipping out as their universe collapses in on itself like when certain Game Genie codes are entered. Cory Arcangel created a movie with Paper Rad about this kind of deterioration of the world of a video game as it ages. I am certain I've posted it on DP before, but screw it...

[jperryss]

I have a Castlevania cart for the NES that has bit rot. The character falls right through the floor and dies even in the attract scene when you just let it play it self. No amount of cleaning fixed it so that is what I assumed it was.

Dude, make a video of this and post it to youtube, then drop us a link. I want to see this "bit rot" in action.

X2. Not that I would definitely consider it bit-rot, but I would love to see this.

[Tupin]

I've only ever gotten this on CD-Rs, and I would assume they are a lot more common on them than on pressed discs.

It may not be relevant to your interests, but LaserDiscs often had laser rot, especially ones manufactured by Sony in the 90's. LaserDiscs had to be made in a very sterile environment otherwise they would be messed up.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I've only ever gotten this on CD-Rs, and I would assume they are a lot more common on them than on pressed discs.

It may not be relevant to your interests, but LaserDiscs often had laser rot, especially ones manufactured by Sony in the 90's. LaserDiscs had to be made in a very sterile environment otherwise they would be messed up.

You know how much music I buy. A lot of stuff from the 1990s and earlier now has disc rot. Even one CD I bought that was fine experienced rot a few years later, and this is why I now back everything up to FLAC ASAP.

I don't believe I've ever encountered a single console game with disc rot - Sega and Sony's manufacturing plants were pretty good at what they did. However I have found a few PC games that have died due to it.

[Rickstilwell1]

You know how much music I buy. A lot of stuff from the 1990s and earlier now has disc rot. Even one CD I bought that was fine experienced rot a few years later, and this is why I now back everything up to FLAC ASAP.

I don't believe I've ever encountered a single console game with disc rot - Sega and Sony's manufacturing plants were pretty good at what they did. However I have found a few PC games that have died due to it.

Is FLAC really any better than .WAV or .AIFF? I hear those are lossless as well

[Gameguy]

You know how much music I buy. A lot of stuff from the 1990s and earlier now has disc rot. Even one CD I bought that was fine experienced rot a few years later, and this is why I now back everything up to FLAC ASAP.

I don't believe I've ever encountered a single console game with disc rot - Sega and Sony's manufacturing plants were pretty good at what they did. However I have found a few PC games that have died due to it.

With early CDs I've heard it could be caused because of the paper insert in the front of the case. The paper can be acidic, when the case is closed it's pressed against the top of the disc and can eventually damage it. Some places say to store CD cases on edge in a bookcase like books instead of flat to prevent the booklet from sagging down onto the disc. I'm not sure how serious this type of problem is though as most CD storage racks seem to store them flat. Newer discs might be better sealed on top too.

I've found a Sega CD game with some pinholes in it, I'm not sure if it got ruined as it still played fine though I never beat the game to make sure(it's that Power Rangers game). I've also found a few PC games like that, I can't really recall coming across too many discs like that but it's not like it only happened once or twice either. I just make sure to check discs before I buy them.

[Natty Bumppo]

I've only ever gotten this on CD-Rs, and I would assume they are a lot more common on them than on pressed discs.

It may not be relevant to your interests, but LaserDiscs often had laser rot, especially ones manufactured by Sony in the 90's. LaserDiscs had to be made in a very sterile environment otherwise they would be messed up.

From what I understand the problem with the early laserdiscs was that the glue used (laserdiscs are actually two discs that are glued together) ate into the discs. Which is why virtually all of the discovision (which were the first ones made) suffer from various degrees of laser rot.

[rbudrick]

I have some VCS games that are Brazilian pirate carts. I carefully peeled back the labels on a couple so I could open the casings in order to better clean the contacts (getting some very odd artifacts in some games). Turned out, the carts used EEPROMS. They were suffering from bitrot for sure. I guess the Brazilian humidity did a number on the EEPROMs.

-Rob

[rolenta]

It may not be relevant to your interests, but LaserDiscs often had laser rot, especially ones manufactured by Sony in the 90's. LaserDiscs had to be made in a very sterile environment otherwise they would be messed up.

The original LaserDiscs, those manufacturerd by DiscoVision a subsidiary of MCA) suffered from Laser Rot because laserdiscs consisted of two platters that were glued together back-to-back. The glue used in the original LaserDiscs seeped through the alumnium causing the rot. I have an original Laser Disc that I bought in 1979 and it is now unwatchable.