[ale] OT: Labels on CD-Rs

[Jeff Hubbs]

I had a couple of rolls of film developed at Wal-Mart today and I've
started having a CD made whenever I take film in; keeps me from having
to scan prints and it's not all that expensive.

Anyway, I picked up my stuff and the CD - a Memorex CD-R - and they had
stuck a roughly 1" by 4" rectangular printed adhesive label on the back
of the CD-R.

Now, back in the day, I know you could do that and it was no big deal,
but now that we have 52-time and 58-time CD drives, it's my
understanding that you can't even get too heavyhanded with a Sharpie
anymore and that you in fact run the risk of having the CD-R shatter in
the drive.  

Anyway, when I got home, I saw the label and said, this has got to go,
so I started to peel it off and...whoops, off comes a roughly 3cm by 3cm
patch of the the white CD backing, with the aluminum on one side of
it!!!!  Left behind was laser-etched tinted transparent plastic!!

It has been my understanding that a metal-less CD can actually be read,
however, I think that the slightly-pulled-up aluminum around the ragged
edges of this hole in the backing makes it impossible to read - I tried
it in several drives.

It occurs to me that this must be a really cheap CD-R that has the
reflective coating under what appears to be no more than a layer of
paint.  I want to bring my negs back to get them to burn me a new CD-R,
but I think I'll bring them one of my own blanks.

So am I right to have tried to remove the label?  I didn't even want to
put it in a drive because I could imagine the vibration that would set
up and that's not a good thing to do to a hard drive, bolted in just
below.

- Jeff






_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale