Originally Posted by Ro-J
I figured this would come up eventually in this discussion, just not this soon. Im going to state right now, because I have been seeing this claim of peoples game disc rotting happen off and on on gaming forums as of late, that pinholes on disc are not related to bit rot. They tend to not cause issues with a disc being read at all unless they are just really big in size (which tends to only happen if caused by the owner). It seems that some people have confused pinholes with disc rot and have freaked out when going back and seeing their older pressed disc having them where there is no painted layer on the disc.
Pinholes are typically caused when the disc is pressed, or afterwords during processing and packaging, and do not get wider, or worse over time, unless some moron starts rubbing at them hard with his fingernail or something out of paranoia. Sometimes they can happen due to customer handling too, if there was a tad bit of excess on the top layer in a tiny spot and it got rubbed off, or the disc got dinged somehow on the unprotected layer.
Pinholes have been a common manufacturing problem with cds right from the get go when compact disc was released to the consumer in the early 80's, and do not cause rot, and are not typically or commonly caused by disc rot, period. Pinholes can be present on the disc when it was bought new, regardless of what year it was manufactured. People tend to not realize how much handling a disc goes though via machines and people during the manufacture and package process.
Actual cd disc rot in relation to a cd will have bronzing/discoloration issues usually that get worse over time. I have never in my life owned a cd based game with that kind of issue. I have owned music cds manufactured in the 80's that did. UK PDO was one of the major culprits in regards to that.
There are other things that can effect compact disc too, like being stored in poor temp controlled areas, which will cause the layers to change color (typically white) and/or flake off in spots. Tiny spec flake offs due to that may initially look like pinholes, but they are not caused by the same thing and are random in size and can get worse by touch.
Thats not really normal cd rot related though, as it wouldn't have happened if the owner had stored the media properly over the years. The company Prodisc likes to try to spin that as rot related in their sales pitch PDF, along with pinholes, so they can sell more cd-r media. Some guy from RFgeneration linked to that when he shouldn't have in one of his panic blogs where he confused pinholes with disc rot a month ago. Also in regards to the pinhole is rot related belief, it doesn't help either that some moron edited into Wikipedia that pinholes are rot related on the disc rot entry. Another supposed expert passing off his fear spin as fact.
The fact is the pinhole thing has been a common issue with compact disc media since its been on the market. Its nothing new, it didn't just suddenly start to happen, and those pinholes didn't just happen magically over time during storage. Music collectors having been dealing with it since day 1. Its a common issue, and nothing to lose sleep over.
Laserdisc rot issues tended to be similar to cd rot initially with the early laserdisc and Discovision stuff, with the reflective layer becoming visibly damaged over time due to rot. Later manufactured disc with rot issues though still tend to look fine to the naked eye. Pinhole issues with laserdisc were minimal after the Discovision period due to better manufacturing, and the fact the internal layers are not exposed to everyday use/dings and scuffs. I only have one LD disc with any kind of pinhole problem. Its my copy of The Howling.
Supposedly some Dreamcast game disc are starting to rot, so I have read anyway. I have never seen one personally that has rotted, though I have seen new games not boot right off the bat due to invisible manufacturing flaws. I do imagine Bluray users will see rot issues over time, as Sony has already managed to make some disc that have rotted. Sony was horrible at making Laserdisc, so that doesn't surprise me one bit.
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