Mold on VHS tape?
 

Hi,

I have many recorded VHS tapes from TV. A few of them I found recently had mold on the tape. A few years ago I used a bad Phillips VCR and rewinded the affected tapes with it, then I played them on my main VCR. I'm not sure though if it's a safe method.

Is that fine to do or do I need to contact a professional?

Thanks

Did they have mold on them when you last played them? In any case, best not to play them now in your "good" machine until the mold is resolved.

There are a number of older threads about mold. Check them for more discussion.

No, it happened because I put them in a closet.

I read other threads but what I wanted to know is if it's safe to rewind the tapes with another VCR and then play them on my main one.

No, it's not a safe method. You're just spreading the mold spores all over the vcr by simply rewinding the tape. And you're contaminating the good VCR by putting that tape into it. If you want to kill the mold, you have to open the case and clean everything with 99% isopropyl alcohol. Once it's done, go with the tape. You can use that crappy VCR to clean it. If the tape has a lot of mold, it may become sticky and the VCR won't be able to drag the tape. You have to take care of this before even attempting to clean the tape. If the tape has valuable content, go for it. Otherwise don't bother. Not worth your time...

There are some professionals/companies doing digitizing that have cleaning machines or similar to deal with moldy tapes more safely if there's anything valuable on them.

Are you sure I'd contaminate the good VCR? After I rewinded them with my bad one (at least I wanted the mold to not damage the tape further) I can't see a single white spot.

It only happened on the worst one, where the mold got so sticky the VCR ripped the tape by rewinding, and I have to repair the tape now.

In the past I opened my (good) VCR after using the faulty tapes and I cleaned the heads inside. I'd be able to do it again.

There's nothing very valuable, they're really only TV recordings from Disney Channel, CN and such. They were recorded on the Italian feeds, so that material is way more rare to find though.

Few things are 100% certain, but do you really want to take the risk? There is no way others at this forum can accurately assess the risk because they do not know the environment first hand. They do know that mold spores spread readily so the risk is real.

Its your tapes, your VCRs, and your circumstances. And the risk is yours as well.

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. That's assuming you're just rewinding the contaminated tape without any further cleaning. You're essentially spreading the mold throughout the tape and the vcr. Isopropyl alcohol (99%+) will kill the mold but you have go all over the tape if you plan to use it on your good VCR.

You must clean everything, not just the video heads: all the guides, capstan, pinch roller... everything that's been in contact with the contaminated tape.