An easy solution is to use Google. Google for "bit rot" site:digitpress.comOriginally Posted by boatofcar
Here's one of several old threads on the subject:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33676
An easy solution is to use Google. Google for "bit rot" site:digitpress.com
Here's one of several old threads on the subject:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33676
That just happened to me this week. I found a stash of my earliest CD-R disks from 98 or 99 and they were very flaky around the edges. One had some PC games I wanted to check out so I put it in the tray and it read the data just fine but I'm not going to try the rest or else I'll junk up my drive.
But my guess is that cheap CD-Rs are lucky to last 10 years with commerically pressed CDs lasting a little longer. But I'm not too worried about most of the junk I have on CD-Rs, mostly games and apps.
But it does get you to thinking of documents that you may want to save like a thesis or family photos. I have those backed up on USB hard drives but for the photos I want to get around and getting more of them developed.
Last edited by oesiii; 03-31-2008 at 07:14 PM.
So thankfully I am not crazy it seems; I found it hard to believe CD´s will last forever, and in the case of cheap CD-Rs I know they die even if taken good care of. I made a back-up of my Dragon Warrior VII for example; I tested it after burning and it did work perfectly fine. It was never used again, but recently I found that it is working no more. Well, at least my original still works.
But I fear the day that some of my most beloved games will eventually die....
I've tried that too.
In fact its safe to say that I've tried everything short of asking Sega and NEC themselves to copy the disks. Nothing has worked and I'm not even sure why.
Funny thing is a friend of mine burned a lot of Sega CD games and according to him his copies worked just fine. I might ask him to do it and see how that pans out.
Sega CD games are usually very easy to copy but if yours never worked then I would suspect a problem with your OS drivers and your burner and its firmware. I've had burners that have refused to copy certain types of disks over the years and sometimes it doesn't get fixed until I get a new burner.
One thing I do these days is buy a burner that's been out a few months at least and read up on good forums like Afterdawn to make sure it copies and makes the DVDs or CDs that I will likely be creating.
You're either using shitty media or your burner doesn't support raw burning.
i was just about to say this, 8bit, the reason youre failing is cause youre either using a crappy burner or crappy media. (im assuming you tried different media, so tis the burner!)
Yeah I'm kinda going for the "burner" thing too, even though I've used two different ones. Anyone got a list of burners they know for a FACT can do 1:1 backups of Sega CD and PC-Engine games?
I've had absolutely no problems with my Lite-On LTR-52327S, best burner I've ever owned. I've had it for a few years now and it burns everything I've thrown at it - including those years of selfboot Dreamcast stuff when I was working on BoR and emulation testing.
Last edited by InsaneDavid; 04-02-2008 at 01:56 PM.
I've yet to hear of anyone losing commercial CD-ROM games to bit rot. My copy of Monster Lair for Turbo CD (1989, one of the earliest CD-ROM games) shows no sign of wear.
I feel a bit like the party-crasher here, but my experience is unfortunately far different than most of the other posters here.
I have a collection of several thousand cd/dvd games, from tg16cd to xb360, and I have always taken excellent care of my games. As I was relisting my collection on
rfgeneration, I began the laborous task of checking the condition of every game in my collection, and that's when your classic horror story began. I noticed data-rot (from tiny pinprick holes you have to hunt for, to the rarer peppered-like-a-starfield scattershot of see-through holes) in dozens of my games. Some of them won't even play anymore.
Some of the important notes about this include:
-many of these games I bought new and opened them myself
-I have data rot holes in games from different generations and systems (including PC-Engine originally new Dracula X imported well over a decade ago, a Sega CD Eternal Champions, Saturn Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, 3D0 Hell, and PSX G Darius, just to name a few.)
-I don't run a museum, but all my games have always been kept at optimum temperature, out of sunlight, on shelves, and carefully and gently used (played and then put back in the case
-almost all of these games have no scratches or any other indications that they won't play. It took a few different games that suddenly wouldn't play before I started holding them up to good light and noticed the data rot.
-All of these are original copies, most store-bought new, not cd-r's.
Now I will be forever paranoid about not only my current collection, but purchasing classic optical-disc games online. I fear replacing Panzer Dragoon Saga (mine was stolen, not data-rotted) online, getting it home, and seeing a tiny hole in one of the discs, and worse, not being able to communicate to the seller why I would not want it.
This has been a bit of a personal horror story for me, and while I love to play and collect games, it has led to a new version of care and paranoia about collecting older cd games.
Now I have to track down hundreds of dollars worth of games to restock my collection, and it's far less likely I'll find them in the wild where I can actually check the discs.
Hope I find a PDSaga in person one day...
Mekka-lekka hi, mekka-hinney-hoh
So far the only game I have that has holes in it is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective for the Sega CD, and the game was bad when I got it.
David, I'm looking into that Lite-On you listed. Are there any other factors besides media and burner which could affect the outcome?
slackur:
Wow, sorry to hear about that. Now you're making me feel a bit paranoid considering all of the older PC and console games on CD I own. Apparently LDs will go bad quickly as well and am quite happy that none of mine have thus far. I do own quite a few CD-Rs that have flaked up or easily become useless if the cover even touches a slightly rough surface. This is why many of my more played PC games are ripped and loaded as ISO/BIN, to avoid dropping and destroying a disc. Funny thing is I have floppy disks from the early 80's that still have perfect data on them and 10-20 year old VHS tapes with playback of quality as if they were recently produced. Maybe in a few years there will be some collective effort to discover which games are more susceptible to rotting.
[Website] [Gallary] [Games List] [DP Feedback]
While we're on the subject of preserving games, what would be the best thing for long-term preservation?
Someone on another forum told me there were "Gold DVDs" that are supposed to last 300 years. Anyone confirm or deny?
A bit of this topic was discussed not too long ago. Joe referenced this article which may explain some aspects but not all. Also as to some clarification on the subject, check out the Wikipedia entry about some various kinds of rot and their causes. I don't know of a source that supports the Gold theory but some on here have claimed it's a scam and have the same quality as high-end CD manufacturers.
[Website] [Gallary] [Games List] [DP Feedback]
I certainly would hate to argue with Joe's statements or anyone with technical knowledge calling data/bit rot a myth. I know there are plenty of people with large collections who don't seem to have a problem.
But I know what has happened to me, and I cannot explain it any other way than the data rot theory. I know what conditions the games have been in from purchase until now (many new,) and I know that not only early turbo cd/sega cd copies of mine have data rot, but so do some of my Dreamcast (including a purchased new Marvel vs Capcom) and Playstation games. I do not know of any better care I can take of my media collection, and something has happened to a small percent of them. Games that never had pin-sizes holes in the data layer now have them. In good light you can see through a tiny spot on the disc. And it really saddens me.
I have explained this problem to some of my other collector friends, and many have started to look through large cd game libraries and experienced similar fates. In fact, a few refuse now to even check their own collection for fear of what they might find!
I had to really look for the little holes on some of the titles, but once I knew what to look for, I started finding them more and more, and the mystery of why a bought new game with no scratches would suddenly not work after so many years. I understand that those who may have not experienced this problem personally (Joe, maybe) would have trouble believing in data rot, after all plenty of technical posting list explanations of why it is a myth, outside of the earliest discs.
But, data rot or something exactly like it has happened to my collection, and a few others once I pointed out what to look for, and I feel that these forums are the best place to share my story. If anyone has alternate theories to explain the little pin-sized holes, I feel we all need to hear.
Sorry, just had to get that off my proverbial chest...
Mekka-lekka hi, mekka-hinney-hoh
Shit, sorry, I lost track of this thread. Aside from not screwing around with your computer while burning something, not really. Seriously though, I don't care how fast or great someone's computer is - just let it burn without other crap running in the background. Get up, go take a piss, come back and it'll be done. This goes double for compiling selfbooting Dreamcast images with DiscJuggler - don't even touch the mouse when doing that.
CD-R's made in Japan usually give better quality than their Taiwanese counterparts. TDK is alright but is usually a mixed bag. Memorex is generally crap. Maxell CD-R Pro are usually solid quality as is Verbatim. Imation media is decent but tends to be inconsistent, however it can be damn cheap (50 discs for $5.00 every now and then) for weekly backups of projects and things like that.
It's the damn glue they used to bind the LDs together.
I think part of the problem that slackur speaks of concerning mint, well taken care of games going bad on their own has to do with storage - period. As in not being removed from the case and being used, just sitting in the same spot with the same air and conditions. I'm sure we've all cracked open a sealed classic game at one point that looked to be in perfect condition only to find a rippled booklet, oxidized connector board, or something similar. All things need to breathe and just as a book can deteriorate sitting on a shelf, I'm sure a game can break down just the same, especially since most of the time the discs are neatly packed inside their jewel case coffins with a said paper product - the manual. Take your CD games out and give them a spin every now and then.
dave i agree with you to an extent. i do think its definitely the way slackur stored his games. maybe its verticle vs horizontal. maybe its the wood that the shelf was made out of , maybe its the temperature/humidity of the room (or maybe humidity only lasted for several months but was enough to leave residue).
i have many old pc games and sega cd games, all of which look brand new. so again, i think this is a very isolated incident that had some external causes
There are only a couple of things I can think of to account for your problem. One, is that something is wearing away at the top of your discs, which can lead to problems with the discs being read by the laser and would also account for the visible 'holes' you've discovered; the holes themselves would then be, in reality, spots worn thin in the decal. Another possibility is that you've been repeatedly screwed into buying really crappy pirate 'burn' discs and the dye is breaking down en masse, and it's taking the actual physical part of your discs with it out of spite.
Any game that's a genuine, factory-made disc is going to be a 'pressed disc'. This means that the CD or DVD is created by imprinting the data on to the disc using hydraulic pressure. The problem with the idea of visible 'bit rot' in factory pressed discs is therefore pretty straightforward: pressed discs cannot degrade the way you've described. They can't. Pressed discs are made of aluminum and very pure polycarbonate plastic: two very stable materials with shelf lives measured in decades(proper storage allowing, of course). There is absolutely no organic matter to degrade: this is the magic of technology. There are a few blatant examples of manufacturers screwing up and causing physical breakdown of pressed discs-Flack mentioned the dreaded CD bronzing incident already- but those are well-known and to my knowledge have not been repeated. The dye in rewritable media is an entirely different story, however, so I suppose that could be your problem.
I hang out with, know, work with, and am generally aware of literally hundreds of professed media junkies. I myself have thousands of pressed discs and have never encountered your problem: in fact, I just checked two hundred discs from my collection from all eras of disc-based media and didn't encounter a single 'pin hole'. A quick click on AIM and the IM network at work confirms that no one else I know has ever had this problem.
The orientation of the discs in storage, horizontal or vertical, is irrelevant. The residue left by humidity or chemical exposure would affect the discs in a far more obvious and blatant way... DO you work with a lot of chemicals?
Last edited by G-Boobie; 04-15-2008 at 04:00 AM.
I recall those threads were unfortunately tainted with drama and not a lot of firsthand knowledge about the subject. I look forward to your article; sorry about the rotted discs, though!
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