Preventing CD rot?

[PainLesS]

Hi guys,

I've always been interested in video games, but even more lately, so I'm looking to step up my collection. I did some research on video game collecting and read more about CD/disk rot, and similar problems with aged games.

Maybe you more experienced collectors can help me out: Can you prevent this from happening, or is it doomed to happen sooner or later? I need to educate myself a bit more before I possibly start buying more games.

[Alpha2099]

I would say the best thing you can do is keep them stored in a safe place. We just recently recovered my mom's Atari 2600 (granted, cartridges are not the same as discs) from her parents' attic, where it's probably been sitting for close to 30 years, and both the system and games work just fine.

[RP2A03]

Unless the disc was poorly made or improperly handled bit rot should not be a problem in most cases. You can find quite a bit of information here: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/reports/pub121/contents.html. Sections 4 and 5 are of particular interest.

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

I own and have seen a lot of CD-based games, but have never seen a single one with bit rot. Maybe someone else on Digital Press may have witnessed it. If not, I suspect it's a Y2K-type situation.

[sloan]

I own and have seen a lot of CD-based games, but have never seen a single one with bit rot. Maybe someone else on Digital Press may have witnessed it. If not, I suspect it's a Y2K-type situation.

Yep. I think it is largely a figment amplified by internet parrots.

[wiggyx]

It's a thing. It's not nearly as rampant as some folks would like you to think, but it does happen with pre-2K and some post 2K stuff.

[PapaStu]

The rot comes from bad pressings more than anything. Though there can be data degradation due to improper storage of CD's and DVD's (primarily heat as a factor), I've never seen that and I worked music retail for 7+ years.

Most of the discs that I've either seen break down or have heard about are either CDR's, VERY VERY VERY early factory pressed music CD's, CDR blanks and Laserdiscs. CDR's have a lower quality standard, and many of them and are prone to failure. There were laserdiscs that were very prone to oxidation and the data disappeared because of that, thus IMO creating the 'data rot'.

[NeoGeoThai]

I've never had or seen a rotten game cd/dvd/gdrom.

The only rotten I had is an old music cd "Technotronic , the remixes" .
It had some fingerprints on the cd and now I can see through those prints !!! The pressing is gone!

[Rickstilwell1]

Another thing you have to think about is that on CDs and DVDs the data is written in 2 places (which is why the laser sometimes slides up and down while reading discs). If there is bit rot in one spot but the data can be loaded from another spot it will still work. Deep scratches and big holes are where you get to the point that a disc won't even read past a certain point or at all. That is how I have been able to make flawless digital copies with no skipping from old used music discs that even have a few tiny pinholes in them clearly in the data ring, or still record onto blank CD-R's that clearly have holes caused by manufacturing errors.

[PainLesS]

Thanks for all the replies!

Either way, it would be important to take appropriate measures to preserve them (minimum humidity, low temperature, etc.).

[Natty Bumppo]

Most of the discs that I've either seen break down or have heard about are either CDR's, VERY VERY VERY early factory pressed music CD's, CDR blanks and Laserdiscs. CDR's have a lower quality standard, and many of them and are prone to failure. There were laserdiscs that were very prone to oxidation and the data disappeared because of that, thus IMO creating the 'data rot'.

Laser rot (as opposed to bit rot) was essentially unique to laserdiscs - unlike cds and dvds, laserdiscs are actually two separate discs glued together. The early glues were defective and would eat into the discs from the inside - which is why virtually all the Discovision (the first company to market discs and players) discs had this problem - by the time that Pioneer and Image took over as the main manufacturers of discs the problem had been significantly reduced.

[goob47]

I actually think this might have happened on the copy of Sega GT/Jet Set Radio Future that I have for the Xbox. I got it at a garage sale, and it booted up all weird and then just froze. :(

[Neb6]

Another thing you have to think about is that on CDs and DVDs the data is written in 2 places (which is why the laser sometimes slides up and down while reading discs). If there is bit rot in one spot but the data can be loaded from another spot it will still work. Deep scratches and big holes are where you get to the point that a disc won't even read past a certain point or at all. That is how I have been able to make flawless digital copies with no skipping from old used music discs that even have a few tiny pinholes in them clearly in the data ring, or still record onto blank CD-R's that clearly have holes caused by manufacturing errors.

How do you access the part of the disc that still works? Do you use a special utility?

I've had a variety of cyclical redundancy errors on old burned CDRs, but I think that may be a combination of old discs read on newer drives and a problem with the dye used on certain brands of CDRs.

Oh, and for anyone who needs to copy data and not have the copy procedure halt on 'bad' files, there's a neat free Windows program called YCOPY that works well.

[Rickstilwell1]

How do you access the part of the disc that still works? Do you use a special utility?

I've had a variety of cyclical redundancy errors on old burned CDRs, but I think that may be a combination of old discs read on newer drives and a problem with the dye used on certain brands of CDRs.

Oh, and for anyone who needs to copy data and not have the copy procedure halt on 'bad' files, there's a neat free Windows program called YCOPY that works well.

It has to be not damaged so severely that your lens can't read it on its own. a tiny pinhole is nothing but a big gap where label is flaking off will definitely cause scratching noises or not even read at all. Newer CD drives are better than old ones by far. The built in DVD-R drive with my 2010 Toshiba Laptop is the best I've ever had. I reimported CDs that made scratching sounds on all my old computers, and this one was actually able to import them without making those errors. It didn't even notice the black spots in the dye from cds burned in 2001.

[Neb6]

It has to be not damaged so severely that your lens can't read it on its own. a tiny pinhole is nothing but a big gap where label is flaking off will definitely cause scratching noises or not even read at all. Newer CD drives are better than old ones by far. The built in DVD-R drive with my 2010 Toshiba Laptop is the best I've ever had. I reimported CDs that made scratching sounds on all my old computers, and this one was actually able to import them without making those errors. It didn't even notice the black spots in the dye from cds burned in 2001.

Did you just copy the data in Windows or did you use a special copy utility?

[Rickstilwell1]

Did you just copy the data in Windows or did you use a special copy utility?

I just used iTunes for CDs and UltraISO for Playstation, Saturn, Sega CD game backups.

[BlastProcessing402]

I've been playing disc based games since the TG-16 was the only game in town and have never had a legit pressed disc go bad on me if it worked right in the first place (and it didn't somehow get scratched up or otherwise damaged). I don't believe this is a real issue, certainly not one that concerns me.

CD-R on the other hand, yeah, those can go bad over time.

[wiggyx]

Another thing you have to think about is that on CDs and DVDs the data is written in 2 places (which is why the laser sometimes slides up and down while reading discs). If there is bit rot in one spot but the data can be loaded from another spot it will still work. Deep scratches and big holes are where you get to the point that a disc won't even read past a certain point or at all. That is how I have been able to make flawless digital copies with no skipping from old used music discs that even have a few tiny pinholes in them clearly in the data ring, or still record onto blank CD-R's that clearly have holes caused by manufacturing errors.

What? Are you implying that every CD and DVD contains redundant files?

[Rickstilwell1]

What? Are you implying that every CD and DVD contains redundant files?

That's what someone on here told me when I talked about burning backups of a Pink Panther collection DVD. He said that's why it's ok to truncate DVDs that are slightly too large for a standard DVD size.