From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Mar 5th 1999, 21:20
The CDR is not as durable as everybody wants to make it seem. I know of CDRs, MDs, and lots of other writable optical media that have become corrupted beyond recognition with just a year or two of (admittedly heavy) use. The fact is that any media that can be written and rewritten upon with such common wavelengths (light, esp. visible colors) is going to be tremendously susceptible to damage merely by being played. Every time you run a laser, even the wussy ones in a portable CD player, over a CDR's surface, it has a chance of causing a sector to dye itself. Leave any CDR out in the sun and see what happens. It's not pretty. You have to go for the gold ones if you want your information to last under regular use. Blue & Green (cyanoacrylate) CDRs are a smidgen cheaper but pretty weak in the long run. The gold lasts by virtue of being tremendously reflective and thus absorbing very little of the light spectrum. Just a little technical aside, since I know we've got more than a few burner-burners on this list... Tom