Shows how important preservation is. Got to remember that a lot of our media was made in the cheapest way possible esp in the later times.
CDs are particularly susceptible to this. DVDs far less so, and Blu-ray (modern games) will likely outlive all of us—if not stored in a shed.
Fortunately, ripping the games most at risk is usually quite easy.
Of course DOOM survived. How am I not surprised?
What idiots thought CDs were indestructible? They scratched easily and the alumina flaked off from exposure.
Yeah, because it concerned me with my large collection of CDs I can remember warnings decades ago they were estimated to have a seven year life span. I'm pleased to say all mine have well and truly surpassed the seven year mark.
The producers knew this well before consumers did. Re-buying degraded media was part of the business model.
And this is why I’m currently ripping all my discs of any sort to ISOs. Sadly I’ve already run into 4 unreadable ones.
I did this with all my PS1 games a while back, ran into a ton of unreadable ones. Managed to read some scratched ones by trying out four different drives, but some sadly fell victim to disk rot ☹️
o7 thanks for the memories I guess!
To be honest I've got a bunch of CDs, DVDs and game discs etc. Never stored in a shed or attic and many have rot. They tend to be particular labels, publishers or manufacturers. For example I have a few BBC audio CDs and most of those within a certain range of years have succumbed. I personally wouldn't store these in a shed but I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened under any conditions. I now use ODEs where feasible or FPGA. My game discs are mostly for looks now.
Where I live temperatures can reach -30C in winter and 30C in summer, so storing anything "sensible" in a shed is a very bad idea. Everything has to be stored in a controlled environment or it will quickly get moldy and rusty.
However, I kept my old 5.25" diskettes in a box where they were a bit squeezed together and they obviously didn't like that. It could also just be time. Anyways, a few years ago I decided to copy everything on hard drives and some diskettes were now unreadable.
I waited too long to backup them and now it's too late for some of them.
And even stored "properly", I also have burned CDs from the early 2000 that are also unreadable. It's unfortunate but there's nothing I can do now, except to learn and remember the lesson.
I'm always baffled by people that find old computers stored in barns and still working. Where I am I don't think they would last more than two winters with this kind of temperature and humidity variation.
Does putting a waterproof label sticker on the top of the disc prevent this sort of decay?
It might- but you’d have to worry about the chemicals in the adhesive too.
Why not put it all in a sealed chest?
Maybe in the Disney vault.
@ktec Is this link supposed to work? For me it points to the same post - itself 🤔
The link to the article is https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/09/this-is-why-you-should-never-store-your-retro-game-collection-in-a-shed/
That should be the link you see in the post but, if not, I hope the link pasted above works for you.
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