Seriously i let a friend borrow a Xbox 360 game it came back with the lightest of scratches and it will get to a certain part *fully loads the game lets you play for a little gets to one loading screen and bam, Fucking thing wont boot. Its not the Xbox boots every other game fine. Yet i have a Dreamcast burnt disk thats been kicking around on bookcases metal carpet etc... without a case for 3 years scratched to shit and itll boot. Didnt ever have this problem with cartridges sure you had to blow in them and clean them with alcohol and stuff but atleast the damn things would eventually work. I havent come across 1 cartridge that wouldnt work, I lent one of them to a buddy it came back with Filthy connectors one blow in it and it booted first time.
Scratches on the right places does wonders You can clean cd's and polish them to fix the scratches which many times solves the problem.. alltough you are right cds are more sensetive to break as where you could play soccer with carts..
Years ago i bough a extra PS1 + lots of games. One of these games, Need for Speed: V-Rally, hasn't got a single scratch and simply doesn't work. It boots to the PlayStation logo and then stops. I can even hear the drive "desperately" trying to read it. If i'm not wrong, i even tried checking it on a PC, but the drive couldn't read it either. I already had the european version of it (that works flawlessly) before this one showed up.
Check the top side of the CD (label). Look for marks, scratches, etc. If anything is on that side and if it's rather 'deep', then your data is destroyed. Especially if there are markings near the center of the disc.
The CD was in excellent condition. Not a single issue with it. I ended up giving it to someone that had the same game, but didn't had the case and manual.
Yeah, discs are very strange. My son's DVDs are scratched to hell and I do mean really badly yet they all play fine! Maybe the top layer of you disc has a tinny scratch which probably would kill the game since that's where the data is. yakumo
This will be the fall of our cartridge based game eventually. CDs though are fairly unreliable as well though. I have a copy of Gex for the Saturn that is flawless top and bottom. It plays the intro video and then just sits on a black screen.
It is like being shot with a gun. You can be shot 6 or 7 times and still live if you are lucky but 1 shot in the right spot and that is it. Lights out !
Dvd discs all the data is in the center. CD and blu ray both have their data on the label. This is why dvds are better with reading with scratches.
Speaking of Bitrot, what is the life expectancy of a cd or dvd? Assuming it's cared for properly, kept out of the sun, etc? I thought it was decades, but I don't know.
AFAIK Blu ray has it's data on the shiny side, which is then coated with TDK's magic anti-scratch sauce. Do single-layer DVDs have another thin substrate over the data, THEN the label? Obviously DL DVDs have a layer in the middle...
Not sure if there is another subtrate over it. I once had a dvd-r that suffered from rot and when pulled in half was a single layer. Best way to describe dvd structure would be if you were making a sand which and the data itself is the meat in the center. So even if it's dual or single the data layer itself is always in the center. When it's a dual layer the other layer is on top of the first layer so the laser reads deeper into the disc. I have heard that blu ray does have a special coat on it to prevent scratches since its more sensitive then dvd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqlgtvwjml4 video dvd-r being made.
For unscratched discs not working, it could be sun damage. If the discs get hot in the sun then that can be very damaging.
