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Your burned CDs and DVDs are decaying, and the photos on them may already be gone
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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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I still refuse to believe in disc rot until I see it happen to me. Until that occurs, I will consider it a urban computer myth.
I was ripping my entire DVD collection and I lost at least 3 movies to disc rot. They looked perfectly good, no scratches or anything when looking in the light, and I’ve always taken good care of my discs (out of sunlight, in their cases, in my house) and yet multiple players just could not read some or all of the disc.
I refuse to believe you have burned and then later used more than a handful of discs if that's not happened to you. I've seen it many, many times.
Back in the days this even happened after a couple of months if you bought the cheaper brands.
My old music CDs still work on the stereo and I bought some of my Megadeth albums in 2011. Perhaps music lasts longer than data.
I have cd's from the 80s, they last if you look after them, but i also think older ones were 'better', i've definitely had CDRs that have had the printed layer start flaking off
I worry that my lyric booklets will get humidity damage.
It depends on the type of CD you used. The older ones with a Gold layer didn't degrade as much.
I've got regular DVD-R and CD-R discs, si IDK. Maybe I've just been pretty lucky because I have never personally experienced this supposed thing we call disc rot.