Has anyone known their CD-R's to rot from the adhesive on CD labels? I have had a number of discs become unreadable after a few years and they always seem to be the ones with labels on them.

I experienced the same... when I bought Office 2k I backupped it twice. I used the same discs (Sony). 1 Set I labelled with my Stomper labelset, the other one I didn't label.

The labelled one isn't readable anymore (tested on a couple of CDROMs), the other one works perfect.

I kept both the backups in the same cabinet, cool, dry and out of the (sun)light .

Darn....now what am i gonna do with hundreds of my Divx-backupped DVDs? Are there any preventive measures? I have a little over 200 of perfectly labelled-divxs for my dvd backups - redoing them will take me weeks if not months. Should I start clone the readable ones? Haven't tried them all....but so far around 50 of them are still OK.

I think that the rot only occurs when certain materials get combined. Some glue may cause a reaction with some dyes, resulting in rot. Maybe some glues are even so agressive that all kinds of dyes will rot from them... I don't know.

I only know for sure that adding a label to a disc never can do any good for the disc.

Xox: I'd suggest to backup your discs. Maybe wait a couple of months, buy a DVD-R/+R drive and back it up on DVD media. That won't cost too much time, and your data is safe...

I just found one casualty - Panic Room Divx cd. It's only about 3 months old but it is also the only one I made using Verbatim DLP. All my other backups using TYs and Kodaks are fine, even with labels - dated as far as 3yrs back. But am backing up all of them anyway, just in case.

Labels will fall off eventually due to deterioration of glue or heat during usage, that's why I never use 'em. I only use Sharpie.

I have labelled a few discs, HPs & Samsung. None have problems as yet.

Max time after labeling is 1-2 years.

Shall I backup those?

All hail the magical Sharpie

I have one with a label and its an audio cd. Burned a few yrs. back and it skips. Biggest reason to use the sharpie, its quick and easy. I dont want to take the time to make labels anyway. And in the 10 minutes it takes to make a label i could just disct@2 it.

....

what's a sharpie?

A felt-tipped pen. A magic marker. That sort of thing. Like what you would mark your laundry with.

Behold. Sharpie Fine Point, my CD labelling weapon of choice

perosnally i prefer to use red.

Shapries are so yesterday. For those permanent jobs I prefer to use a

see the problem with chisels is that the label will keep peeling of while rotating in your drive and get all those little pieces stuck inside and end up with a clear piece of plastic.

I remember one CD that did get unreadable after some time labeled (not more than an year).

I think my DVD drive doesn't "support" reading labeled DVD discs. I once made a nice label for San Andreas with that game chic in it and it went unreadable so I tried to take it off gently but as it wasn't working I applied some force in the act. The result was half the stuff sill attached to the disc so I went to the bathroom and with some hot water (not TOO hot for the hands) and soap I cleared the damn adhesive (spell? i'm trusting firefox) stuff and it went JUST FINE in the drive. Works perfectly!

It might be because of the weight of a dvd disc being greater than a Cd.
My drive is a Sony DRU-720A bought in 2004/05?

Sorry for the off topic... but yes I believe it rots discs or at least some.

CDs and DVDs are different in their construction.

While the data in DVD discs is sandwiched between two 0.6 mm layers of polycarbonate, and thus very well protected from damage from the label side, CD discs have he data layer near the top with only a thin protective layer on top or for really cheap CD-R media, only the reflective layer itself protects the data.

So it's much easier for a chemical in a stick-on label to find its way to the data layer and interfere with it.

DVDs on the other hand have more tightly packed data, and stick-on paper labels seem to be more problamatic for DVDs than for CDs.

See this thread: Sticky paper labels on DVD+/-R discs: beware!

lol old thread is old.

Yep LOL!!!! talk about digging up old bones this is a 5 year old thread

Thank you very much DrageMester you were very clear