Aleron Ives wrote:My SA2 disc had a pinhole, but luckily it still ripped OK.
Pinholes can be caused by flaws in the painted on label of the disc where a speck of paint has come off due to centrifugal force, but can also be caused as a result of physical damage such as a scratch. On media discs read by a IR spectrum optic, such as CD media, a pinhole(s) caused by flaws will rarely cause a issue. But pinholes on IR read media caused by damage can be fatal to the discs data. However, on media discs read by visible spectrum DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etcetera, a optic pinhole can be a very problematic issue regardless of the causation.
poopidoop wrote:game cube games are so bad about it
No, and let me be clear on this. Nintendo has had all manner of issues with their proprietary media. Nintendo Wii is the only exception as Nintendo wisely went with using off the shelf DVD-ROM technology for that system.
Technically speaking GC uses DVD-ROM as the format, but with it Nintendo literally had issues with both defective discs and mastering issues, with both problems heavily effecting certain of their first party game releases throughout the systems life. Couple this with GC, just like DC, experiencing odd disc read issues with aging ODDs that required the end user to either open up their system and play with the trimmer setting of the ODD or replace the ODD altogether.
Wii U again ran into problems as select games, once again first party titles primarily, used a special data encoding method that apparently was problematic to actually author onto the discs, resulting in many a hushed product replacement program that if a retailer or a customer encountered a issue with a blatantly defective game disc Nintendo would send out a new copy of the game... from a newly manufactured batch.
Disc rot is quite rare. I'm a member of a collector's community that actively keeps track of disc rot reports, and it is truly rare for media outside of LaserDisc, the original format that "Disc Rot" was discovered on, to get a documented case. And even among the documented reports, a good chunk of them falls into the extraneous variables category, meaning the alleged "disc rot" may have been caused by a outside variable unrelated to the disc itself.