this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder
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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
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I have never seen a factory pressed CD/DVD fail. Optical media is the most reliable.
There was an issue with discs made by the PDO pressing plant in the UK between 89 and 93 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc_bronzing
I've seen it, but I collect a lot of magazine cover discs, 90s PC games and stuff, it's def pretty darn rare. 'Did the previous owner(s) abuse the disc?' is a vastly higher concern for me in my eBay adventures.
I do have two magazine discs that I had trouble reading that were probably rotting, but they were definitely left in the sun for a long while judging by how brown they where, that or they were put inside an oven.
i have multiple wii u discs that dont work
Indeed. My oldest music CD is from about 1991. Still playing it from time to time. Flawless.
I've had one (extremely cheap) pressed DVD start to separate, but I was able to archive it before it became unreadable.
I bought a CD boxset of all the MAD Magazine issues from launch until the late 90s (when I bought it). About 8 years later I still had it and attempted to back it up into ISOs It was like 6 discs and of course disc 5 was unreadable so the entire thing was useless :-/
Hmm, there might be some procedures to help you to get them backed up to ISOs, even if they seem unreadable. What program did you try to use to make the ISOs?
I have no idea, this was like 15 years ago haha It was probably Nero or Roxio. At this point I'm sure I could download the whole collection from somewhere.
I recommend using Alcohol 120% since it has an option to ignore reading errors. Other programs just stop when encountering an error.
Although, yeah, it is probably already archived somewhere on the internet, but you never know.
Probably in a nicer format, better quality and better compatibility. Would not be surprised if the box set required its own software to be installed to read the magazine
Yeah it had an installer and program to read everything, it wasn't just a simple collection of scanned pages. I got it at a computer show back when I was like 10 or 12, and when "computer shows" were actually a thing in the late 90s hahaha
Oddly enough there is a specific album, live's secret samadhi, that I've never found a rippable copy of. I've found like five copies over the past half decade at used record stores, all in seemingly perfect condition in terms of lack of scratches, but they won't play correctly all the way through or rip correctly. Could be anecdotal bad luck, but I think the cd pressing of that album has bit rot in general for some reason. I've not seen that on any other factory discs I've ripped.
If it is the same album always, all of the copies were probably manufactured cheaply or deficiently.