This is the first I've heard of it, this supposed "disc rot". I was watching some gameplay of the Super Mario 64 DD version when someone commented the bugs in it might be disc rot and not just...bugs. That led me to wikipedia to look it up and then led me to this: http://www.rfgeneration.com/news/Disc-Rot/An-important-note-...

Scary to think about. The author lists "Sega CD, Turbo CD, Saturn, or even older PC CD-Rom games" but excludes PS1 games. Is this an issue that only effects discs older then PS1? I saw that they also saw issues with Dreamcast games. Thankfully I don't have many DC games but where does that leave collectors?

Can you see these white spots with sunlight? I'm mostly worried about picking up games at the swap meet or a yard sale and having this happen to me. I'll of course be checking my PS1's now since they are the oldest discs I own...it wouldn't effect Gamecube/PS2/Xbox and up era games would it?

Also I looked on here...there were bairly any topics related to this issue. Is this a big deal or am I making it a big deal? From that article it sounds like it effects lots of older disc games. I expect to find a few games with this issue (unless PS1 discs are safe).

Then again look at the article, he was having issues with ebay sellers. They didn't know what the hell disc rot was, how to spot it or anything. And even sent the author discs that had issues. So if I start asking sellers on ebay about disc rot, will they do the same thing and just brush me off, only to send me bad games?

Put my mind to ease people, tell me i'm insane and have nothing to worry about lol.

I don't think disc rot is a huge deal, and there's no way to tell if it ever will be. But it is actually a thing.

Disc rot isn't as prevalent as once thought. In the late 90's, there were rumors that our discs would only last about 7 years. It typically happens to CD-Rs, but not professionally pressed CDs.
If a CD was professionally pressed, it will likely last for many decades, unless there was an error during the pressing.

Disc rot is like expiration dates for very durable food. Manufacturers say discs will be fine for 15 years or so but that's just the bare minimum. If you store the discs in direct sunlight or in the refrigerator then that date is accurate but if you just have them on the shelf at room temperature they will be fine for many many decades. Normally stored PS1 and Saturn titles will be fine for 20 more years easily. Probably even longer. Also DVD's and Blu-Rays are even more durable. Games on DVD's and Blu-Rays will most likely be fine for the rest of our lives.

Most of the disc rot from the 90's come from the pressing of the discs, iirc, so later pressings (towards the end of the 90's) should be fine, though the polycarbonate can deteriorate or degrade over time, especially if exposed to ultraviolet light/waves.

As a owner of a Duo from the year they came to America, I can say quite loudly, HOLY FUCK DISC ROT SUCKED!

It was mostly CDs with the silver tops you had to worry about. But then again, printed CDs may have it, you just couldn't SEE it as well. It's caused by the oxidation of the reflective substrate, and was mostly caused by scratches on the top layer of the CD. if the scratch reached the reflective layer, it would "rust", but since it's so thin, there was nothing left after the rust. I've had old CDs turn almost completely clear. It can also happen when air gets in between the layers when the disk is made, but that has a limited amount of damage it can do, since it runs out of air. If you have a tiny scratch that reaches the layer though, air can keep getting in, causing more to vanish, so you have a blob of clear on a CD.

I'm pretty sure most newer CDs are thicker that original ones, with more added behind the reflective surface; I've tried measuring them with calipers before, but cant remember if I saw any difference or not. And whole disk labels also help protect from scratched.

Since they have no reflective layer, you can see them in the sun just fine, hold the back of the disk up to the sun, you should see light. HOWEVER, if there's printed label on the other side in that spot, it'll block the sun. You may see a colored dot, maybe not.

If the CD is silver, like old TG-16 or Sega CD, check it up to a light. PSX is must more rare, generally do to label damage. Lots of people say DC had it, never seen it there, same with Saturn. But any scratch that reaches the metal reflective layer will cause this.

Also, most of the systems that have to worry about this, the Duo and Sega CD, the majority of the CD is CD audio. So the game will generally still play just fine, but the audio will skip. For duo's, it's the second track, and sometimes the last track, that hold the data, everything else is audio that doesn't matter. Really bad audio skipping can lock up some games, depending on the code though, since the sample never "finishes". Dragon Slayer for me is an example, on my bad CD, it just sits there after the audio skips.

I have about a half-dozen SegaCD games have at least one pin prick of disc rot. I have a copy of Gauntlet Legends for Dreamcast that I bought used from a GS ten years ago that is riddled with disc rot. I haven't come across any XBOX, GC, or PS2 games with disc rot.

Like that RFGeneration article, my affected SegaCD games are generally in otherwise excellent condition. My Gauntlet game was worn before I bought it, so I'm leaning towards a scratch on the label side that broke the seal to the data layer.

To the OP, only thing you can really do is be discriminating with your purchases. Carry a mini-Mag light with you can shine it through CDs you're thinking on buying. If you see any pin pricks shining through, where are those pin pricks? Are they on the outer edge where music tracks or unused data lie, or near the center where program data might reside?

I have heard of CD collectors whose collections from 1982-1987 era had suffered widespread disc rot 25 years later and were unplayable at that point. I see no issue with any of my longbox PS1 games. During the DC/PS2 era I encountered so many unplayable games, this was usually a laser issue in my system, but several times actually I had to return games because of imperfections on the disc upon opening it brand new. Some rental companies at that time also tried putting protective skins on the discs to prevent scratches, but this would cause air bubbles that would make the disc unreadable too.

I lost most of my audio cd collection to disc rot, though they were being stored in a very humid basement, so it was my fault. Try to keep your CD based games high and dry.

Hold the disc up to a light source and you will see tiny holes in the metal film if the disc has rotted.

I would be less likely to assume that kind of degredation was "disc rot", and would instead assume it was just damage from handling where the label-side of the disc was chipped or scratched.
(or in the case of extreme environmental conditions, something caused the label to de-laminate from the disc)

Also, if you can SEE the hole, there is definitely a problem.

You are probably missing bits with label-side damage at probably a microscopic level, depending on how fine an area the laser reads.  

Whoa!!

This thread is like a horror movie.

So I've recently started to look at the PS1 as my next "easy target" because there's so many good games I don't have, and they don't cost an arm and a leg.

Now I'm thinking that if the games are only going to last a few years, then maybe I shouldn't even bother?
Or maybe I should get in ASAP and be very critical about the condition of the pieces I buy.
And when the bad condition pieces rot, my discs will be worth a fortune!!

Muhaahahaha
*Dives into a Scrooge McDuck size vault of games*

Disagree, I have had several laser discs show holes due to rot and they have never been miss handled or damaged on either side.

As well as several 3DO games that I bought new and had been sitting here in their long boxes that have micro sized pin holes due to rot and never had any damage to the silkscreen side.

The pin holes are the pressing glue eating the foil, I have not seen this in newer gen optical discs but it was a huge problem early on and through the. 90's.

You definitely want to make sure there's as little damage as possible on the disc, but bitrot isn't as common as people are making it out to be

I freaked out about this a while back, and I went back and played all the games that even had a semblance of "disc rot," only to find the one game out of about 50 that had any negative affects was Panzer Dragoon Zwei, which was scratched to hell in the first place. Everything degrades eventually, but I haven't seen anything that's true disc rot on anything Sony or anything PS2-era or newer.

Also, in the case of Sega's games, who is to say that those holes weren't there straight from the manufacturer. I've read articles about people opening their brand new games, only to find these pin holes. So, I'm unsure if those are by products of the manufacturing process or if they are holes from disc rot, but every game I had that had those holes and no other damage worked completely fine.

Ugh, I hate it when 20 people post and nobody addresses a big misunderstanding going on.

GirlGamer, you are confusing two completely different discs together. That Super Mario 64DD disk is a magno-optical format, but it's primarily magnetic. Magnetic disks are susceptible to other magnetic interference, that is not the same thing as "disc rot".

The other discs you mentioned (SCD, TGCD, NGCD etc) are optical only discs. The only way they can degrade is if the thin data layer on top of the disc gets damaged or flakes away from poor glue or metal. This is probably what people mean by "disc rot".

Even then, I think disc rot is a corruption of a widely misunderstood concept called bit rot. I don't know who came up with it, probably some fear monger. Old data mediums don't rot like organic things, but they can slowly break down just by the nature of nothing lasts forever. The thing is, they all break down in different ways and virtually all at a very slow pace. EPROMs can lose their bits just from electrical dissipation. Mask ROMs and other types of fabricated integrated circuit will take hundreds of years to break down, except for shorting or other types of physical damage.

In any and all examples though, most consumer data mediums are all quite hardy and will probably all outlive us all.

Thank you Guntz for pointing that out, the only discs i have had, that failed me were 1990's cd-r's.

As I said, it's when the metalic reflective layer oxidizes. True disc rot grows; you will end up with large patches with no reflective layer.  It has to be from a break where air can get in.  If it was created by an air bubble like some say, all you get is one little pin-prick of data loss, and most CDs can recover from that since chances are it's an audio track.

Here's someone elses photo not mine:



After a while, all the little spots will grow together, be one big empty spot.  That's not label side damage like some people claim, but that may have been the root cause at some point.  Some people also confuse delamination of edges of CD for disc rot, then get debunked, and people say disc rot doesn't exit.

Disc rot comes from some sort of manufacturing error. Laser Discs were prone to it beacause the weight of the disc meant the glue holding the layers together would crack. Some DVD got it for a variety of reasons. I remember Anchor Bay had a huge issue a decade or so ago where their movies would play once or twice before dying.

Disc rot isn't nearly as concerning as people make it out to be. The laser should have no effect on the disc so if it's made of sturdy material it will last lifetimes.

I've seen some pretty odd disks like that, typically when someone just leaves a disk on the street, sometimes they do turn clear like that.

But either way, despite the physical medium things like this are a great argument for ROM/ISO dumping. It's not just 'yay free games', but it should be viewed also as a preservation effort. I agree that physical copies are satisfying, but we must acknowledge that they won't last forever.

I hope the cartridges will last at least my lifetime (born in 1980)!

As long as the mapper is good, it's easy to replace the roms if they go bad with eeproms or even real proms and solder them back on.  It wont be a "numbers matching" cart like some car collections, but it would be better than a dead cart.

Obviously you are not in need of a dictionary there, fella.

I heard about disc rot a little bit ago and I looked at all my Saturn and Dreamcast games and haven't noticed anything. Between my Saturn and Dreamcast I got over 40 games too.

Is disc rot anything like scrot rot? Because if it is I can definitely use some help right about now.

I found the first CD I ever made (Had some crappie freestyle 90s music and the WHOLE Pokémon Rap theme song at the end) and I remember buying my CDs from a really cheap place (fluorescent lighting and no ac)...still plays like a champ and works in my laptop.