Ten Golden Rules: How To Treat Your Compact Discs

"What happened?" you ask yourself, is this disc a reject or have a done something to break it. After some careful consideration you phone the shop you bought it from and complain and ask about a refund. The man tells you that on this occasion you can but he also says "In the future you may want to consider the ten golden rules for looking after a CD."

This is what the man told me;

1. Avoid fingerprints. Touch the CD, DVD, Blu-ray or HD DVD at the edge or in the inner circle of the media. Scratches, fingerprints, dust will shorten the disc life.

2. Use a smooth, fuzz-free cloth/fabric for cleaning.

3. Protect your CDs and DVDs from sunlight, smoke and any corrosive gases. The discs are very sensitive to UV-light. Verbatim CDs, DVDs and HD DVDs have a special AZO Dye, which have an ultimate resistance to UV light for increased protection and reliability. They have an excellent performance for long time archiving.

4. Avoid heat, the disc surface can be bent. Store your disc at approx. 20-25 C? and 55 % relative atmospheric humidity.

5. Store your CDs and DVDs upright in a jewel or slim case. Do not stack the discs, they can be bent. Do not use sleeves that emit chemicals or leave scratches.

6. Do not leave the CDs and DVDs in the drive or in your car, temperature is too high.

7. Do not use labels. Labels can cause disc warping because they tend to shrink in warm environment in the drive and they can cause unbalances during rotation.

8. Do not remove the label from the disc surface, the data layer can be damaged.

9. For labeling the disc surface use only smooth CD/DVD markers. Do not use unsuitable writing materials such as solvent-containing pens or ballpoints, they can damage the recording layer. Inkjet printable media is available for full colour disc surface printing. Lightscribe media can be used for lightscribing the disc giving a special label as well.

10. Do not drop, bend or scratch the inner ring of the disc. Damages can be caused during pulling them out roughly from cheap jewel cases or video boxes.