Disc Rot and how should I handle it.

[AaronC]

I'm starting to get a bit scared of disc rot, especially with my PSOne collection. I'm starting to seriously consider selling some of my most expensive ones due to the worry over disc rot. I've got a pretty good amount of RPGs that I'm going to play at some point, but I've found that I really like playing PSOne RPGS on the Vita.

So my questions:

1) How much should I worry about disc rot?
2) The Pros and Cons of going completely digital for my PSOne games?
3) For the ones that has went more digital download for a collection, do you regret it or glad you did?

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

[BoneSnapDeez]

I don't think this is nearly as widespread as some of the "hardcore" game collecting community would have you believe.

I have yet to encounter a single game in my personal collection that appears to have problems running due to disc rot.

Inspect games before you buy them. Take care of your games.

[Stark]

In my experience, this doesn't just happen to games sitting on your shelf, in a temperature controlled environment. I say that as someone who owns games that I purchased new, from the advent of CDs, which still work just fine.

I have a Bonk 3 CD which seems to have signs of this (crappy one for this to happen on, right?), but I am not the first owner, so who's to say how it was stored during the 20+ years of its existence?

[Tanooki]

Rare but possible. I've had this one on a cartridge based title (NES) and this was back from a used buy via Funcoland mail order in the earlier/mid 90s, and then not that I bought it but it's more of a known issue I saw 5 years ago at a flea market out west a dying/dead copy of MGS Twin Snakes for the Cube.

RCR ended up where you'd fire it up, if you were lucky you could play a few moments of combat in the first screen and it would freeze. Sometimes it would choke before that point when the text was coming up about the story, and just a couple times I got it to screen (of combat to the right) #2 maybe twice before it choked. The data somehow on the chip or the connection from there to the pin was jacked. The MGS game, I've seen stories online of some crappy screw up from Konami when pressing that one game where the top layer will start to peel away like flecking dried out paint and it will kill the game eventually.

[AaronC]

I take really good care of my all my games and have really only purchased disc games from stores or, on the the rare occasion, from a trusted eBay seller. I don't buy them at flea markets any more because 1) they are usually in terrible condition and 2) because they are outside in hot weather all day. It's worked so far. I haven't really had an issue with any disc games I've purchased, but I started down this worm hole the other day and started to panic a bit.

Regardless, I do still plan to buy most of these on Vita even if I do have them physically because I do enjoy playing them on the system and they don't cost a ton to own two copies in two different formats. My wife made a good point about me being able to do both and still having my physical copies if my Vita dies out. I like having games on the shelf, as I'm a collector at heart, but I also like the convenience of digital downloads and the ability to play anywhere along with the physical backup for the original system on my shelf.

[J T]

It's not a bad idea to keep an ISO backup of your favorite PS1 games. Disc rot is more of a problem for poorly maintained games, overly rebuffed used titles, and cheaply made discs (like CD-Rs). In decades time, you very well may have a disc rot problem even with nice discs, but that is just conjecture at this point.

[Exhuminator]

Everybody has different opinions about this. So here's mine...

Keep your games properly stored in a controlled climate and they'll be fine.

That means:

Stored vertically upright in their actual independent cases.

In a relatively cool environment (50f-70f).

In relatively low humidity (40-60%).

If you do dumb stuff like keep the discs in a binder, stored in a hot attic, dank basement, outside in a shed, in a humid and warm garage, in your car's trunk, etc. god help you and your discs.

[samsonlonghair]

Disc rot is like bird flu or crab grass; it's made out to be a much bigger problem than it really is.

My first thought on this subject is that all organized systems in the universe are subject to entropy given sufficient time. That is one layman's understanding of the second law of thermodynamics. I may be oversimplifying this a bit, but I think it holds true.

Are media discs subject to a significantly greater deterioration than any comparable organized system? Not as far as I can tell. If I compare my PS1 CDs from 1995-2000 to any other form of home media from the same time range, I do not see significantly greater deterioration on my PS1 CDs. If anything, the opposite is true. Optical discs seem to be holding up much better than magnetic media like VHS cassettes from the same time frame.

How many twenty-year-old pieces of home media are still in perfect condition anyway?

[CRTGAMER]

Disc Rot is not problem on game discs unless you do not store them in a climate controlled environment
The tag "Disc Rot" is actually carried over from the days of Laser Discs which was a real issue. Laser discs are two sides bonded together; the manufacturing process had issues of coolant moisture trapped in the glue causing the corrosion. DVDs that are double sided do not have the same issue due to improved bonding process. I know out of my 400 plus laser collection, I have exchanged multiple titles (video deteriorated) to Tower Records back in the day.

Not Disc Rot, but have care with the label on game and DVD movie discs which is just a layer of lacquer covering the data underneath. The label side is actually the more fragile side and can get scratched alluding to assumed disc rot.

[ElkinFencer10]

This is a great thread. Being a constant worrier, I think a lot about disc rot, but it really sets my mind at ease to have so many people who have been collecting longer than I and who are more knowledgeable about these things than I all say that the danger is far overblown. Phew.