Tips and Tricks-July 2004

About six weeks ago, I bought a new computer—an HP computer with an AMD Athlon 64 processor (3200+). It came with a fairly large hard drive and reasonably good components installed. I added 512 Megs of memory to bring it up to 1 gigabyte. It has a DVD/CD writer, a card reader that reads six formats and a few other niceties. One of the things I didn’t like was that it came with Windows XP Home edition installed. I was assured that I would be able to upgrade to XP Professional.

I attempted to upgrade rather than do a clean install because I thought that with a new system it would be fairly easy and I would be able to save myself some trouble with getting drivers. I made several attempts to install with my only copy of XP Pro and would get part way through the process only to see what appeared to be a hardware error with the blue screen occurring when the system got to the restart part of the process.

I contacted HP’s tech support by email. I got a routine answer that appeared to have been put together by cutting and pasting based on keywords in my message. Needless to say, most of the suggestions were irrelevant and made no difference. I finally made a telephone call, reaching a rather rude off-shore technician who would only say that the upgrade was possible, but that HP would not assist.

After a couple more attempts at installation, I finally decided to take a look at the CD, an original that had not been used more than three times before. In spite of being stored in a rigid plastic jewel case, it had developed multiple cracks from the hole in the middle, out toward the edges of the CD. The error message had nothing to do with hardware, but with the condition of the disk itself. I got in touch with Microsoft to get a replacement disk—not a problem, right. It took three weeks for the disk to arrive.

I eagerly went to the computer, but before I installed it, I decided to create a backup copy. We have a CD duplicator that is absolutely wonderful for this purpose. I inserted the disk and a brand new blank disk in the duplicator. Eight minutes later, it still had not completed the copy. I thought that there might be a problem with the duplicator. The duplicator has been used before and since to make multiple copies without incident.

Now, you would think that I would look closely at the new disk, but noooo. I tried doing an installation. Everything went well, until a certain file was required and the error message said it couldn’t find the file. I tried making copies on a different computer and different drives. Finally, I inspected the disk and found a blemish about 3/16 of inch long, about an inch from the outside edge. Was I fated to use Windows Home edition on this screamingly fast new computer forever?

Not quite. We went to the computer show and found a reasonably priced copy of Windows XP Pro. I won’t go into the details, but I made several backups without incident and successfully installed the upgrade. In the meantime, I had again contacted Microsoft and the replacement disk actually arrived within one business day of my phone call.

There actually is a point to all this. CDs are not indestructible. I will illustrate this with one more example, but you have to forget about it as soon as you read this. I occasionally carry a banana in a bag with books, disks and other paraphernalia that won’t fit elsewhere in case I get hungry. I forgot about the banana for several days and it finally got mooshed into just about everything else that was in the bag, including several CDs (in paper envelopes). I was able to wash most of the disks off with clear water and a very gentle touch even a couple that had a lot of banana goo on them. Fortunately, most of it hadn’t completely dried out. Two of the disks that did not have much on them did not fare well at all. The label with what appeared to be foil on the top side of the disks came off in strips, leaving me with a disk with areas of clear plastic showing through. I have not tried to read the disks because the coating appears to be coming off without much effort and I don’t want to chance getting the stuff on the inside of the drive.

I decided to do a little research on CDs and their life expectancy. I finally did find an article that wasn’t too old and explained a lot about CD-Rs, including what the various layers are. The article can be found at http://www.sacpcug.org/archives/0010/komp1000.html and was written by a member of the Sacramento PC Users Group, Ken Hopkins. I learned that the clear plastic is polycarbonate, with a layer of photoreactive dye, then a reflective layer, covered with a layer of acrylic. The label goes on top of the layer of acrylic. According to the article, the quality of the CD depends on the color of the dye and the reflective layer.

Exposure to light can damage the disk. Using solvents on the label side can also damage the disk because there is only a very thin layer between the label side and your data. Felt marking pens have solvent so it’s best to use pens designated for CDs. You can also damage the surface by using a ball-point or similar hard marking device.

The article has much more in it that might be useful to you. I at least confirmed that I used the right technique for cleaning my banana encrusted disks—clear water and pat dry with a soft cloth. No scrubbing and definitely not in the dishwasher.

Probably the best source of more information would be to search the sites of any of the disk or drive manufacturers. A quick search at HP revealed the information that you should not put an adhesive label on a DVD, even a label designed for CDs because the adhesive can damage the disk.

It’s worth doing a little more investigation, especially if you are relying on CDs for the preservation of important data or family photos.

I promise not to allow any more bananas to attack my disks, if you promise not to reveal this terrible secret to anyone else.

PC Community, P.O. Box 3127, Hayward, CA 94540-3127
Copyright 2005

Banner Photo by Charles Scamahorn