i was moving into my new home yesterday i placed my entire collection of precious cds and software inside a rubber-maid box, the box itself has no ventilation.

i placed this entire box next to the air conditioner which oddly is anchored at wrist level on the wall, so anyways as i was busy unpacking other stuff, the air-co was blowing at the rubbermaid box at full power for an entire day, occasionally i would turn the air co off but would quickly turn it back within an hour as the country i lived in is very hot and humid, the room would turn into an inferno if the airco goes off for a while, and so this cycle of warm and cold continues until night, that's when i actually wondered weather it's ok for the rubbermaid box to be placed next to the air co like that, so i opened the box and to my horror it was like freezing cold in there!!! Then, i noticed my case-logic branded cd holder (non-plastic ones) as well as some of my other stuff in there... is all WET!!!!

so now i have 2 things i'd like to know:

1: the constantly changing temperatures in my room, has it already wreck the "interior" of the disc?

2:when the rubbermaid box was cold as a freezer after being blown for 5 hours by the air co, then gets warm again for an hour before being blown icy cold again, with droplets of moist/water forming inside the box as well as a wet cd case...how badly is this going to affect my cds?


My cds are NOT burnt discs by the way.

Depends take them each if you can an look at them horizontally and see if you see any waves in them if you do then your cd are toasted. But if they look good clean them off with some kinda of solution for cd or lens cleaner and put them into your drive and see if the computer can recognize them. But also since we don't know what kinda media your using we have no way to tell you want to expect from them. Since you don't have anything burned to them if they are lost then just go buy some knew ones...

Just take them out of the case, wait for the case to dry, and then put the dry discs back in...I've only seen burned discs get messed up like that. also check them, lay them on a table, if they are perfectly flat, they should be fine

my cds are not blank media, they're store purchased windows software and audio discs.

not blank media, not burnt disc.

i'm checking for the waves but i'm not too sure what they're suppose to look like because i only see lines at the circular sides of the disc.

the cd holder was mildy wet but the cds were dry, but very cold. i'm worried that the cold air that's been blowing at it for 5 hours and the sudden rapid humidity change from me turning off the Air-co might have damaged the disc in some way....

this is the cd holder i use:
http://www.amazon.com/Nylon-280-Disc.../dp/B00005ATMG

Yo-

So they - in fact - are commercial stamped discs - which is a good thing-

Dry them off - make sure that they lay flat until you can properly sleeve and store them-

Everything should be ok - pressed discs are surprisingly resiliant to abuse-eh

I agree with you bigmike
Whilst the disc's are not indestructible they are very robust apart from heavy scratches.
I would burn backup copies of all your discs putting the originals away somewhere safe. Then when a copy fails just make a new backup from the original, a system I have used with sucess for years.

yes, but i'm just worried that all those cold air might have already shortened the original cd's lifespan by breaking the interior part, and when i do need the originals to make a back up years from now..well....i'm worried that it might not work by then.

Yo-

They are STAMPED discs already-

It isn't like they were in a deep freeze - then put into a hot oven-

As suggested - store them properly and use the backups-

Then get back to us in 20 years and tell us how they faired-eh!!!