Posted by Roy L. Fuchs on 12/29/05 04:57

On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:23:58 GMT, "Large Farva" <none@nospam.com> Gave
us:

>
>"John Howells" <john@howells-99.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
>news:41gfomF1ekbhkU1@individual.net...
>>
>> <nucolso@yahoo.com> wrote
>>
>>> I often put masking tape on the non-recordable side of personal-use
>>> discs I've burned, and use a ball-point to mark the masking tape with a
>>> description of the disc contents. Is this acceptable, or might it be
>>> harmful in some way to either the disc or a player?
>>
>> It is not acceptable. Use the special CD/DVD marker pens sold for the
>> purpose to write directly on the disk.
>
>Good Lord. Masking tape will destory whatever disc it's stuck to..why would
>anyone do that?

It has nothing to do with the destruction of the disc (unless one
tries to remove it).

What it does do is throw off the balance of the disc so bad that it
will eventually damage the drive mechanism of the player.

The read/write surface of the disc is a flat plastic read through
cover for the polymer layer that gets impinged upon (read burned) by
the write laser. The problem with damaging the top side of a burnable
disc is that the polymer layer is just below the surface of the top
side, and can get very easily screwed up by ball point pens, tape, a
fingernail, or any other thing that can transfer surface pressure form
whatever implement through to the polymer write layer, causing damage
and or data loss.

Almost ANY SOFT TIP "magic marker" type device is safe for them.
Perhaps the most generic type discs out there with a mere silk screen
overlay on the top side is the most susceptible.

A printed (read printable) disc does not get thrown off balance
enough by the jet printer ink weight to be problematic for the drive
mechanism.

[Back to original message]