Let's talk about disc rot on DC discs for a second

[dark]

Any of you guys ever heard of disc rot? If not, to make a long story short, people say that due to pressing errors and low quality pressing facilities, a certain % of discs in a batch will have noticeable problems in the data foil area of the disc - and that this has nothing to do with the environment the disc is in, and everything to do with the original manufacturing at the pressing plant. Typically this is evidenced as pinholes (you can see them if you hold the disc up to the light and the light shines through what was otherwise an invisible pin hole in the data foil of the disc).

Another manifestation of disc rot is discoloration of the data foil. It looks kind of like this:



Now here is my question for you guys who own retail copies of DC games...

I've periodically seen someone warn people about DC GDRoms and say "man, they are not good quality because a lot of my copies have noticeable disc rot and some do not even work anymore!" And say that the disc rot must be occurring because of low quality manufacturing back in the day.

Ok, sure, but...

However, when I periodically look at my 50+ GDRoms, there is only one GDrom that has the disc rot discoloration (and this disc was a preowned disc), and none of them have the pinhole problem...

I find it kind of funny that the people who I've seen complain about disc rot coming from the manufacturing seem to have disc rot in a sizeable percentage of their DC discs... whereas I do not. As a result, instead of thinking that I'm lucky, I think maybe any corrosive issues like this are caused by the environment the discs are kept in moreso than faulty GDRom manufacturing back in 2000/2001...

Some of us here have 100s of DC discs. Do you guys have many discs with pinholes or unusual discoloration?

[BrianC]

No one ever seems to believe me but the corrosion you are talking about comes from heat and sunlight. I keep my games in a carrying case which may not sound like the best idea but it's actually kept them corrosion free. If you keep your games in a big game shelf that is near a window that has light coming through it at some point in the day then you probably have disc rot.

[CD AGES]

Wasn't there already topic discussing this around here? I remember the discusion goin into detail about this...

[dark]

No one ever seems to believe me but the corrosion you are talking about comes from heat and sunlight.

I agree. And the point of this topic isn't to just talk about disc rot, but to verify that the claims of disc rot en masse on DC discs are over exaggerated and if it happens in any great effect, it is happening because of the environment these people have their discs in.

[Alec1382]

I make a point of keeping the evil sun away from all my game stuff.

But no, I've never seen or even heard of this kind of discolouration before. I have, however, had a couple of games with pinholes in them. I'd never heard of disc rot, so I assumed that this was just caused by mistreating them. The only games I've noticed this on happened to be quite scratched as well.

[CD AGES]

Ahem!

http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtop ... f=2&t=3406