Let me know what you think!

I have CDs that I bought in the early 80s. None of them have this issue.

All the digital information in storage today is vulnerable to various types of degradation and/or destruction. A giant solar storm or EMP blast could erase a lot. In a few thousand, or even hundreds of years, our ancestors may have little information remaining from our era. I remember reading a “hard” science fiction novel discussing the attempt to store information intended to last millions of years. Everything they looked at seemed to fall short, and it was finally decided to carve the information in granite, located underground in asteroids far out in the Oort cloud.

Etching into stone is the best time tested way to truly preserve information.

I'm a 70-year-old retired repair tech. This was noted around 2002, especially with the recordable discs. I noticed on my last road trip that a third of the audio copy discs was not reading. When I got home, I removed the CD from the dash and I found that the lens needed cleaning. That worked, all discs read. Then I examined all of the discs and found a couple that had a brown tint around the outer edge, turning yellow toward the center. Check all of your optical discs!

Many won't be aware that, other than accumulating scratches, the discs can degrade over time. Thank you for this video. What I've been doing for the last 15+ years is storing all my data on an external HDD, and every 5 years or so I transfer everything to a new external HDD - keeping the old HDD in careful storage. Hopefully data storage on holographic crystals will become domestically available within the next decade, and theoretically that should give us permanent and high capacity data storage.

This is why i backup my backups

I have cds that I bought in the 90s I I still have those same copies I never had that problem

My collection has several thousand titles in it and I just went through 1,000 of them to transfer to my new central server, really sweet. I have not seen any of these problems with the disks. Even on my oldest disks. Nor any problems with the old Warner disks other than old full screen formats I replaced outright. The only disk rot I've seen is when they're new and had been sitting in a warehouse for a long time and even that, they're easy to spot and I've had less than half a dozen in total. All from very small houses. I've been buying DVDs from Amazon for 22 years and quality has been consistent the entire time across all the larger houses. Sets and series are surprisingly good quality. The Blacklist is the only series I've had that was junk in the box. Not rot, just a lot of disks that wouldn't play for no apparent reason. The replacement set was better. I never wasted my time with Laser Disk. I got burned by Beta (1,000 titles at over 100 dollars a piece) and wasn't going to get burned twice. As much as I like them, they're too big and too delicate, I didn't see a future for them and there wasn't. I never collected on VHS either and went directly to DVD. Overall, I've been very happy with them. I've never had one play once and not play again, ever. I have upgraded a lot of the old full screen/ letterbox to anamorphic widescreen and digital remasters however. These transfers to the server gave me the chance to do it. My system runs a Samsung 4k player, another Sony International 4k/ blue ray/ DVD player, and three 1080p upscale Sony carousels that just refuse to die. We use those for binge watching series and they still get excellent pictures. Combine that with a 4k 65inch LG television and a 7 channel 2,200 watt surround sound system and it's much better than most any movie theater you'll walk into; even with a 480p disk upscaled to 4k. (see above comparison) I have 1,000 watts of subwoofer power alone. One of my oldest series is Law and Order and we just started these (20 seasons). And they're perfect. I'd have to check, but I believe all my Rambo's will play just fine. Now I'm going to have to check it. I'd check it now, but I really don't care. Do you have anything acidic in your air? Any shops nearby that use chemicals? It sounds like an individual issue. If any of this was actually real, I'm pretty certain I would've heard about it by now. Especially the Warner and Rambo situations.

It is criminal how few subs this channel has

I live in the humid tropics. In normal use and storage less than 1 in 100 suffer the "rot", CDs or DVDs but it happens.

while i would agree, i have a lot of discs from decades ago that are just fine - i think storage obviously plays a factor and definitely not exposing it to intense light like sunlight. not saying it doesn't happen, but i do have a sizable DVD and bluray collection and i always make sure to store it properly. and i still prefer physical media over streaming.

In a word, entropy. All things deteriorate over time. Which is why in the digital age we are in it is important to have the means and legally so to archive and preserve the past for the future.

M-DISC is an archival-quality storage solution that preserves photos, videos, music, and documents for 1,000 years or more. Unlike hard drives, flash drives, and other writable media, that can lose data, M-DISC has been designed to protect your information from degradation and loss for centuries. it works the same as DVDs and Blu-Ray, the discs are made from ceramics.

My copy of twin snakes does have that peeling issue but does still play. Might be time to sell.

As a 78 collector this is funny to me 😂

A sad day when my copy of halo 3 ceases to function.

I have in my "software" collection...ie...Victor 78s and other brands...some now 100 years old...and they are as pristine as when they were pressed in the 1920s, and beyond!

I don't store/record data on DVD's, but I've been recording video and stereo music on them since 2015, mostly off the internet, with great results, using a stand alone DVD recorder. I haven't had any sort of "rot", or any other problems show up yet, eight years into it. I use brand name re-writable blanks. Using RW-DVD's allows for erasing segments, re-recording, editing, etc. --Works great.

Back in the late 1980s I bought some CDVs, they were a hybrid of music CD and Laserdisc. 3 tracks of audio-only, then a music video around 4 minutes. Of the 8 I had, 4 had rotted by 2008. But, by 2008 the videos were on KZfaq or on DVD compilations so it didn't matter.

I'm all right, I ripped all my DVDs years ago. 😎

Only a small movie collection here, so far no disc rot, but my home is in somewhat of a basement ( please don't laugh ) and some humidity is to be expected naturally, but not that big, and always taking care to put them back in it's case when I'm done with it... The fact about where my home is what makes me having some concerns for my collection, spent a lot of money to build it up...

you remind me i have to rip all my game disks to my HDD... should put them on tape

I have had it happen once with pc game Duke Nukem Manhattan Project. Had to buy another disc to play it again

Perhaps this is why we're seeing more and more vintage hardware mods that use ISOs and emulate the disc drive. I do worry about how I will back up all my data. I have far too much and too slow an internet connection for cloud storage to be viable, I really need to find a local solution which I guess would be tape

I have never had this issue with disc rot and I’ve been collecting since the 80’s

It appears to be a complex issue. Maybe you got a bad disc out of the batch, maybe they got exposed to the elements, and then it depends how you control the climate in the storage too. Thanks for going over good storage practices. Either way, you need to replicate the data inevitably to preserve it

I had a recordable DVD separate. I then had two halves of the disc and any data that was on it was also destroyed. The data was already destroyed when the disc deteriorated. The two halves were loosely together and easy to separate. For that reason I would not recommend having your only copy of any data you want to keep on DVDs. I also don't recommend flash storage but that is because after a few years there is no guarantee that your data will still be there or not be corrupt as the charge slowly leaks out of the charge trap flash cells. A hard drive or tape drive may be better. Just make sure to back those up at some point too if that data is something you really need to keep. I have some personal documents that I scanned that I would like to last the rest of my life. These are not things that I would share with anyone but things I just want to preserve for my own use. Once I pass away they can fade out of existence if they are not on some really good storage media. Of course because I want to preserve them I have them on multiple external drives stored in safe places where they are not likely to be damaged at all. That is they are not on some shelf my cat might accidentally knock them off of and damage them (hard drives can be damaged if they are dropped even one time).

I have vinyl records older than 50 years and they're still in good condition and most of all....still playable. On the other hand my first CDs begin to rot.

I found a couple of cdrs in my basement that had disc rot. Otherwise my almost 40 year old cds still look and sound the same as they did back then.

I keep all my discs in a dark cabinet. This far I never had disc rot.

I have been collecting movies for years and have yet to come across disc rot.

Never had a problem with disc rot until last night. I got an hour and a half through For a Few Dollars More and it stated skipping, checked the disc, brown stain all along the edge!

Most people who started collecting DVDs 20 years ago are seeing their collections go bad, the average life expectancy of a DVD is 15 to 20 years.

I only have one disc in my collection that has rotted- an EP released on CD-r in 2002

What would happen if we stick on a protective label on the disc? Like those custom labels they used to make for cdrs

Only time I come across it is couple pc cd roms and ps2 games . None of my 80s and early 90s have had no current issues

I've heard talk of disc rot for probably decades by now, and although I'm by no means saying that your reporting here is untrue, I have yet to come across one single case of disc rot. I own somewhere around 1700 CD's (I still have the first one I bought, in the mid-80's) and I also have lots of DVD's, Blu-ray's and 4k discs; probably around 700 in total, and not one that I've seen has disc-rot. So.. it's a case to case scenario, I believe.

This only happens if you leave your discs out!

Interesting about Twin Snakes, I collect mgs titles and was wondering what happened to my copy.

I used to get this sort of thing /ALL/ the time back in the day 20 years ago? 15 years ago? Using the cheaper CDRs. I would have to reburn them every, couple of years to compensate for the degrading of the discs. I recently went back over my 100s of audio discs stored in binders from decades ago, and all of them seem to be ok for now, turned them all into mp3s.

Disc root is caused by storing a disc in a moist area. Always store discs away from sunlight and humid areas. I’ve never had any problems with DVDs ever.

Yeah my HD DVD collection has many bad discs. I thought that it was due to an oil that the cases evaporate onto the discs though. My copy of Twin Snakes still looks fine. This game lends itself to rough handling as it's a double disc game and gamecube cases were always a pain to eject the discs from let alone from a double disc case.

I think if you store them correctly, treat them with care, they'll last. What's the other option? VHS tapes? Streaming? Digital downloads?

*What about burning (or backing up) to M-disks?* They are supposed to last a thousand years? But you need special burners and disks (meaning $$$$$)

Never had any disc rot and I have cds bought in the 80s. This is bs.

Discs will last 1000 years my a**!, well, yeah Humans are just Rotton to the core ain't they?

That's true, but if the CD media is a high quality one and you take proper care of it (e.g. not putting it on a direct sunlight or on the hot surfaces...etc), it should last for many years... Cheers!

So far I've never encountered any discrot, but I bet it will happen with some discs with time. But today even some CDs I have from the 80s are perfectly fine - that's 40 years.

Today i bought LG DVD drive for 8$. Looking to test my collection of pirated games. Not used them for like 10 years, wonder how many world work. Yes, buying licensed DVD was quite hard here, and when it comes ro movies, i have buch of 13 on one. Quality there is like 240p and it's pretty bad to watch, if you have a big TV and a good vision. One licened DVD i have is 15 nearly years old and it's fine. Quality is not that bad, and with SCART it works amazing, with automatic on and source select and operating from TV remote. I also plan to get M-disk compatible BD burner to have some backups. They are also quite cheap, especially second hand ones. Currently restoring my SSHD and it takes multiple months, because it's very broken. If i had backups, i don't had to do that.

Kinda sad, this whole issue, to be honest. That was the one form of media, that I thought if was properly cared for, and taken care of, would outlive myself. I feel the worst, the most, for individuals that have amassed massive game collections, on any kind of disc format, mainly since they cost the most. I got out of all physical media, except for my CD's, back in 2019, mainly because I just couldn't let them go, unlike everything else, which I just didn't have any sort of attachment to. I just recently turned 45 years old, so hopefully I pass on, and start rotting, before they start rotting. Lol. I still have CD's that I've owned since getting my first CD player, way back in the early '90's. Funny, though, how you can find an old a*s Atari game, from the '70's, and they will, most of the time, fire right up. Lol.

i talk abou this alot; i live in an extremely humid area. what bothers me is that optical media was meant to solve media storage issues in humid areas as tapes are not as robust (mold can easily appear on tapes in humud areas). but i have discs manufactured in 1994 that still works fine today, and discs from 2015+ that are damaged by disc rot. so one thing i am certain is that optical disc should last a very long time, but only if manufactured perfectly. i hope that manufacturers start to use better method and discs, but its probably going to be expensive and the market just isnt there anymore... 😢

Many of my DVDs are either totally unplayable or have spots that need to be FF'ed thru (or the disc automatically jumps ahead, etc

I've never dealt with it. I think it's just an issue of how well you take care of your discs

not once, out of the thousands of disc's i've seen with my eyes, have i ever seen disc rot. even out of those that aren't rotted, all of the discs with a scratch free surface always played. disc rot is not a defect of optical, it's the defect of living in a swamp that would make shrek be proud. some people really will see this title and panic and scramble to rip all of their stuff to a hard drive that will likely not outlive the discs. even then, i have hard drives that have been around since 09 and they haven't lost functionality. outside factors are everything.

If you just store your discs properly and don’t fucking leave them face up on a your cars dashboard, like so many people in this comment section have done for some baffling reason, you’ll probably be fine. Shocking concept that when you don’t take care of your delicate physical media, it will stop working

I came to this conclusion because there was no other explanation for this choppy lag that is noticeable for a split second every minute or so. Sometimes they take an unusually long time for the DVD to load. This happened to my 2003 Alien Quadrilogy disc 1. If I play any other new DVD it works fine. Anything unexplainable has something to do with the damage in the shiny layer. There isn't much research on this but I do know and can confirm, the DVD's for the Ultimate Matrix Collection was cheapily made. Warner Brothers are known to make cheap DVD's. I just haven't had the time to rewatch The Matrix because last time I viewed was 2 years ago.

NOOOOOOOOO. I guess my Oblivion disc won't last forever.

Entropy always wins! This also applies to other media. Even solid state drives suffer from quantum tunneling effects and will eventually degrade.

I have a polymega

Some laserdiscs have this problem, never seen it on cd's or dvd's

Y’all thinking shit will last forever…. NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

FYI, the YT captioning is interpreting the word "rot" as the proper name 'Rod'; thought you'd want to know...

Stop upseting because i watch all the time

All dvd/r I ever made stopped working even when stored carefully after 5 years or less. I never really had a problem with real cds.

I'm not saying this doesn't exist, but I've been around cds for 30 years and have never seen this.

What about M Disc?

Disc Rot vs digital content which one last longer like Sony will soon remove digital content from players

It’s Not True most of the time.

Ironically, when it comes to gaming. Playstation, Xbox, and Nintendo. In the long run Nintendo will win because cartridges last longer and more durable than disc from what I know. Xbox is dead because they are going digital and some Xbox games are NOT even on the dame disc! Playstation at least has the entire game on disc.

casually calling spindle users as psychopaths for no reason...

Thank God we don't have to buy games on discs anymore and just get the license and download to the Console or PC. If your house gets robbed and all your gaming gear is stolen, no problem. Buy a new console, login using your account and download all your games to the new console. But if you buy physical media and get robbed or have a flood, tornado, or fire.. Bye Bye game. You will need to pay for a new copy.