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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:16 pm 
 

I'm an avid collector of metal CDs and Blu-Ray movies.

I've recently heard that such optical discs won't last forever, mainly due to disc rot. I take great care of my discs, but I do fear the thought of losing my collection. Is this something to worry about? I don't care if my collection dies after I die, but until then I want it fully functional.

So, for collectors, what do you know about disc rot? Is it something to worry about, or will well-treated discs outlive their owner?

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 1:21 am 
 

Depends on how they were made and when. Variability in construction is a problem. Cheap ass CDs/DVDs won't last too long. Warner Brothers famously produced a batch of HD-DVDs about 10 years ago that started showing signs of disc rot in under a year.

Your CDs will probably last decades, as long as you take care of them. Don't let them get scratched or scuffed. Or wet. Or leave them in your car where they'll get exposed to temperature extremes. I'm not sure where the term "disc rot" came from, but it's not like your CDs will literally decay before your eyes, like a bad apple. It's accumulated damage and/or shitty manufacture that does them in.
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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 1:32 am 
 

My oldest CD is "Spheres" from Pestilence back in 1993. I have no issues with the disc.

Do you collect CDs too? I'll still continue to buy them, I just don't like the thought of my hard earned money being destroyed.

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 3:10 am 
 

I buy physical CDs whenever possible. I have bought digital albums only in cases where there was no physical pressing, or there were only like 50 so it was impossible to get one. I guess that counts as collecting. I have around 500.

The oldest ones are from the 80s, when things first started coming out on CD. They play fine. The main thing to longevity, ironically, is to not play them a lot. Handling is how they get beat up. I've long since ripped everything as high quality files.
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false_icon
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:52 am
Posts: 567
Location: France
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 7:25 am 
 

GTog wrote:
Depends on how they were made and when. Variability in construction is a problem. Cheap ass CDs/DVDs won't last too long.

This guy speaks the truth.
My only CD subject to disc rot is the first press of Gorgoroth's Pentagram.
I don't know which Dureco pressing plant was used (probably France, as Tragic Empire was a french label), but they had at least one shitty press at the time.
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Zephirus
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:37 pm
Posts: 576
Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 12:59 pm 
 

my oldest disc is Megadeth - rust in peace
it's coming up on 30 years old :o (oh god means im older too :headbang: )
no problems with it at all. its been looked after pretty well, not left in extreme hot/cold etc
kept in its jewel case

if looked after well you should get a lifetimes worth of playing out of them
having said that im not sure they are manufacturing them as well these days?
with the decline in CD sales i feel record companies are penny pinching on costs e.g. producing crappy digisleeves and the like

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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:30 am 
 

Hey guys, I just read some comments on this topic:

https://blog.discogs.com/en/say-no-to-d ... after-cds/

One person said:

Quote:
Hello.

To put the matter of ‘disc rot to a conclusion.

No, it does not exist, it was a manufacturing fault on PDO pressed discs before 1998.

The discs that have discoloured that i have are all PDO pressings from the Blackburn pressing plant that was shut down when the problem was discovered in 1995.

If you have discs that are turning bronze then they should still play.

If you have discs that appear to have the aluminium foil splintering at the edges of the disc, both the outer and inner edges of the foil area under the lacquer coating, then be prepared to throw them away or, if they are still playable, then, if at all possible, make a copy of the disc because the splintering will get worse over time and they will be unplayable.

Its was a fault in manufacture, the ‘disc wash’ before the lacquer coating was applied was performed with ‘hard water’

The water supply in the Blackburn area is ‘Hard Water’ and did not flush all the pre-lacquer process contaminants away and the product should have been recalled. (How do you put a recall notice upon a estimated 5 million CDs)

I tried returning my Status Quo, Slade and Elton John UK pressed discs that were affected to the PDO London HQ but was told to seek a refund from the retailer, this was back in 1998.

If you have a vast number of PDO pressed discs that do not play, why not try sending them back to PDO, if enough people return their faulty discs to PDO something may get done but as always your purchase contract was with the retailer not PDO.

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 2:36 am 
 

That refers only to the specific type of disc rot called "bronzing".

Disc rot in general can happen for any of the reasons everyone has already mentioned here.
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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 4:27 pm 
 

Will disc rot affect all of your CDs within your lifetime, though? Or does this only happen to a few poorly made CDs?

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:37 pm 
 

The Library of Congress once did a study of their collection of CDs and DVDs. Would have been about 10 years ago I think. Keep in mind that the place is run by professional archivists who kinda know how to preserve things. They determined that under normal use, some of their stuff was slated to last only about 25 years. Then again, some of it was estimated to have a lifetime of 5 hundred years.

That said, shitty manufacture will kill anything you own. Period. Hard drives, printers, TVs, washing machines, cars, you name it. Everything ever made always has a very small percentage of shit in the run. The good news is that if something is going to fail due to bad manufacture, it'll probably fail right away. It's not like you'll go 20 years then suddenly poof, it's dead.

In the known cases of bad CD manufacture, the CDs started going noticeably bad very early on. Plenty of time to get a replacement. Hard drives are like that too. If they fail, it's going to be within the first 2 or 3 weeks. Otherwise you're good for a long time.
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Resident_Hazard
Possessed by Starscream's Ghost

Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:33 pm
Posts: 2905
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:31 am 
 

GTog wrote:

In the known cases of bad CD manufacture, the CDs started going noticeably bad very early on. Plenty of time to get a replacement. Hard drives are like that too. If they fail, it's going to be within the first 2 or 3 weeks. Otherwise you're good for a long time.


When discussing digital/data rot in the "end of owning music thread," I found a video that explains data longevity and how rot occurs. Apparently, SSDs have shorter lifespans than traditional harddrives--much shorter lifespans.
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Zephirus
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:37 pm
Posts: 576
Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2019 12:06 pm 
 

Resident_Hazard wrote:
GTog wrote:

In the known cases of bad CD manufacture, the CDs started going noticeably bad very early on. Plenty of time to get a replacement. Hard drives are like that too. If they fail, it's going to be within the first 2 or 3 weeks. Otherwise you're good for a long time.


When discussing digital/data rot in the "end of owning music thread," I found a video that explains data longevity and how rot occurs. Apparently, SSDs have shorter lifespans than traditional harddrives--much shorter lifespans.


yeah, reminds me i need to backup my macbook :o :p

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2019 6:55 pm 
 

Resident_Hazard wrote:
When discussing digital/data rot in the "end of owning music thread," I found a video that explains data longevity and how rot occurs. Apparently, SSDs have shorter lifespans than traditional harddrives--much shorter lifespans.



As with everything, it depends on usage. Solid state drives are just a bunch of interconnected flash memory chips. Each cell in a chip can only be written/erased a limited number of times. The limit is something like 100 on a regular (that is, not high end & expensive) SSD. So on a 1 TB SSD you should be able to cycle through 100 TB of data. A person heavy on the data usage could manage that fairly quickly. A regular user though could expect their entire PC or laptop to become obsolete and need to be replaced before the SSD becomes a problem. Also, SSDs are more expensive than HDDs.

A traditional hard disc drive has those pesky moving parts to worry about. Failure is not going to be a physical problem, like it could be for SSDs, but a mechanical problem due to the read/write head or the little motor that spins up the disc. Most places will tell you to start looking out for signs of drive failure after 3 years, but also some of those places are trying to sell you cloud storage. Personally, I have had traditional HDDs in every computer I've ever owned, going back to when home computers first became a thing. I have experienced only two failures in my lifetime. One was a manufacturing problem, so that happened after only 3 weeks. The other was a shitty Seagate external that started to go after about 5 years. Every other HDD I've ever had has lasted the life of the system.

All the same, back up your shit.
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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 1:57 am 
 

I found some more information on CD/DVD longevity.

According to this site (http://www.cd-info.com/archiving/longevity/index.html):

Quote:
Recorded CD-R: 50-200 years
Recorded DVD-R: 30-100 years


According to The Council on Library and Information Resources (https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4/):

Quote:
CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R discs should have a life expectancy of 100 to 200 years or more

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twistedknife
Metal newbie

Joined: Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:01 pm
Posts: 175
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 2:14 am 
 

I guess pressed CDs and DVDs would last even longer than CD-Rs or DVD-Rs? :scratch:

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Zephirus
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:37 pm
Posts: 576
Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 6:46 am 
 

CD-Recordable, with the blue play area?

no way do they last that long. i had CD-Rs go bad after 5 years or more.

pressed CDs with the silver bottom protection, could maybe last that long

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GTog
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:35 pm
Posts: 1196
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 6:41 pm 
 

I think in this sense CD-R means the kind that are recorded to once, which is basically every album you buy in stores. Blank ones that you can record yourself would be CD-RW. Note that both articles contain big disclaimers about quality of manufacture.
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DeadKid
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 8:51 am
Posts: 541
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Sat Jan 19, 2019 7:42 am 
 

Zephirus wrote:
no way do they last that long. i had CD-Rs go bad after 5 years or more.

I've had the same with poor quality CD-Rs from local bands. However, the best quality CD-Rs are indeed expected to last 50 years or more.

I don't think I've had any pressed CDs go bad. I have however had a few DVDs go bad after only a few years, namely a Kubrick box set and Sin City. Could be a summer heat thing. They may have lasted longer if I'd kept them in a cupboard rather than on a shelf.

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pale_horse
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:36 am
Posts: 681
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Feb 09, 2019 2:12 am 
 

You can read about this online and it is terrifying but I’ve never seen it happen.
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