I still have a number of old Playstation 1 "backups" from around 1996/1997 that are still working fine. As for my Playstation original collection, many are from 1995 and still no problems. Loads of Sega Dreamcast games too, even those are fine.
My friend collects Sega Mega CD & 3DO games, she has had no problems either(we played 3DO need for speed and road rash just the other night).
She also has a Philips CDi that I believe is even older, we watched Matrix VCD on that recently too.
I think it's like most stuff and depends how well you look after it.

Single sides pressed disks have a much longer life span.
It's CD-Rs and double sided disks that go bad.

Recently I cleared out alot of old cd's, however all the ones I did keep still work. back in those days for 90% of the stuff I burned I used the cheapest cd's from ALDI (the dutch might still remember those cd's), for the remaining 10% I used platinum cd's (important data that would be recopied/played alot). I started out burning around 2000-2001 so I should consider backing-up those cd's soon.... *orders a new 4 TB HD*

Richo wrote:

the cheapest cd's from ALDI (the dutch might still remember those cd's)

Aldi? You mean Albrecht Discount?

I found recently that my Mortal Kombat 3 CD is unreadable despite looking mint, so went through my spreadsheet of games and flagged CD based ones I need to back up. Turns out that I also own a lot of them on GOG or can re-purchased them there if need be, so I'm not going to bother ripping most of them. There are still a few faves for which I'll go the extra mile to preserve their specific zeros and ones for prosperity but for the most part I'm OK with the CD's dying - I'll still have the box / manual sitting on the shelf.

I already experienced some of my early CD-Rs (from 2000-2001) rotting. Fortunately they had nothing of value.

My trick is to try to keep important stuff in a few places, on different physical media, and if possible, different physical locations.

I choose DVD-R / BD-R for stuff that I need to write once and store, and DVD-RAM / BD-RE for stuff that's sometimes updated. In addition to storing it on a hard drive somewhere, and a selection of things is also uploaded to email.

Tetrium wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

They probably are but my floppy, CD and DVD games were imaged a long time ago so they can rot.

May I ask how you proceeded with this? And I presume these images can still be used to install and play these games?
I've tried a couple times in the past, but results were various at best 😵

CloneCD

I've been using it for over 10 years to create images of all my CD and DVD computer games. After creating the image, you no longer need the disc, unless you really want to hear your optical drives make noise.

For XP and older, use this to mount your images:

Daemon Tools v3.47 (daemon347.exe)
NOTE: Be careful with this. Modern distributions of this software may contain adware, spyware, or other malware.
CRC32 0AC4C9F7
MD5 FE36EF3ABF2589BEF67F0113F40FF845
SHA-1 7A1D1AF799096C81977F3EF3F9221FB2F278EB44
http://www.filehippo.com/download_daemon_tools/tech/236/

For Vista and newer, I like WinCDEmu:

http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/

For floppy disks, I've been using ARDI/EMT4Win for over twenty years:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012193123/ht … lot/emtcopy.htm

luckybob wrote:

I keep a tape backup in a safety deposit box at my bank. It has things that are not replaceable, such as digital family photos, copies of deeds/titles/etc. I change out the tape once a year.

I'm going to have to upgrade to the 1.6GB tape soon. 😜 But only if I can get a cheap drive.

I've bought 3 different DDS3 drives in the last 4 months while attempting to access my tape archives (for next to nothing, thankfully - remember the one with the tape stuck inside it?) and none of them worked. Despite plenty of cleaning runs I consistently got read errors. It was generally frustrating. Of course it was only when I picked up a free DDS4 drive from work that every single tape read 100% fine.

I still worry about EMP and magnets though. So what's the best archive medium?

brassicGamer wrote:

I still worry about EMP and magnets though. So what's the best archive medium?

Etching it into gold plates and blasting it into space.

I wonder why they are mentioning CD-ROMs when it's mostly the CDRs and CDRWs that are the main issue here?

luckybob wrote:

brassicGamer wrote:

I still worry about EMP and magnets though. So what's the best archive medium?

Etching it into gold plates and blasting it into space.

Or just keeping the actual to-be-archived item in production and in actual use 😜
And of course keeping the blueprints on gold plates etc etc 😜 (just make sure the gold plates don't go into the sun 😜).

And when it comes to making reliable backups, it comes down to doing stuff that ends up there always being a backup available in even the most dire situations (so spread your risks across many baskets, so to say). Using different backup-media and several different locations and having many copies to fall back on.

Btw isn't 100% pure gold a bit too soft?

Never an issue, my CD's get destroyed well before they have a chance to get bitrot 🤣

I think the oldest CD-R's I have are from my wife, and they are all music I've been backing up and putting back into the on-computer collection for years. Most of my retro-PC stuff is on my LAN.

Encode your data in the fundamental physical constants of your own baby universe.

KT7AGuy wrote:

CloneCD […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

They probably are but my floppy, CD and DVD games were imaged a long time ago so they can rot.

May I ask how you proceeded with this? And I presume these images can still be used to install and play these games?
I've tried a couple times in the past, but results were various at best 😵

CloneCD

I've been using it for over 10 years to create images of all my CD and DVD computer games. After creating the image, you no longer need the disc, unless you really want to hear your optical drives make noise.

For XP and older, use this to mount your images:

Daemon Tools v3.47 (daemon347.exe)
NOTE: Be careful with this. Modern distributions of this software may contain adware, spyware, or other malware.
CRC32 0AC4C9F7
MD5 FE36EF3ABF2589BEF67F0113F40FF845
SHA-1 7A1D1AF799096C81977F3EF3F9221FB2F278EB44
http://www.filehippo.com/download_daemon_tools/tech/236/

For Vista and newer, I like WinCDEmu:

http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/

For floppy disks, I've been using ARDI/EMT4Win for over twenty years:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071012193123/ht … lot/emtcopy.htm

Cheers 😀

The Daemon Tools mentions it's for 2k and newer though. Is it really just 493KB?

I should actually still have a boxed copy of CloneCD but I haven't used it in years!

I guess I'll look into WinCDEmu next, thanks 😀

btw I dunno how I missed your reply 😵

Yep, my copy of Daemon Tools is also 493kb. Match checksums to make sure your copy is legit. As I wrote previously, there are other distributions of Daemon Tools v3.47 that include malware/spyware/etc.

I don't remember exactly what the issue is, but I remember reading somewhere that v3.47 has problems with Vista and newer. I suppose I could try installing it and see what happens. Or, if you try it please be sure to let us all know.

WinCDEmu doesn't have all the features of Daemon Tools, but it works well enough.

How about backup tapes? Would they last longer than CD?

Here is a question about CDs. What to do with Playstation ones? Once I clone them (with ImgBurn say) you cannot use them in a console right? So what to do?

vladstamate wrote:

Here is a question about CDs. What to do with Playstation ones? Once I clone them (with ImgBurn say) you cannot use them in a console right? So what to do?

Mod chip.

vladstamate wrote:

Here is a question about CDs. What to do with Playstation ones? Once I clone them (with ImgBurn say) you cannot use them in a console right? So what to do?

If you have a 1st gen Playstation, you can try your ninja skills at the 'swap trick' to boot CDR's without any mod required. 😀

Its been a long time since I played with ps emulation (at least 15 years o.0), but ePSXe and iirc PSEmu, both played ISO images. Also they accelerated 3D at a higher framerate and resolution than native PSOne (TV res/refresh), and of course comming from the HD, loading times faster! Used to use it on P3/800 (with ATi Rage 120 Pro), even in this case, emulation really was much better than the real thing o.0.

KT7AGuy wrote:

Daemon Tools v3.47 (daemon347.exe)
NOTE: Be careful with this. Modern distributions of this software may contain adware, spyware, or other malware.

Why not to download it from the official site then?
http://www.disk-tools.com/download/daemon347+md5sum
The only problem is that it says 20 days trial for some reason. May be you could buy it for a few buck or so after the trial ends. I would like to know it too since I am thinking of getting this software as well.

"Your old CD-ROMs are probably rotting" No-no, not my discs! (Thanks for that thread, though. Data security is an important topic.)
My CD-Rs from 2007 are still fine. ^^ (I wrote them with 4x speed, though. I kept them in paper sleeves and jevelcases also.)
Most of my book ware, too. (That's the media that comes with books.)
They are dating back to as far as ~'94. (beore that, they came with records ?!)
My Audio CDs are fine, as well. (well, I think so. I'm sure that noise belongs to the songs..)

The only exception are Windows installation discs. They are evil and always insist to work unreliable. Period.