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Burnt Discs appear different?

Jschultz

Jschultz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 14, 2005
880
13
Chicago, IL
Is this true? How come I've never seen this?

My girlfriend and I got in a fight because she swears up and down that when you burn a disc, the burnt disc has etches in it to show there is data and music on there.

I simply laughed at her.


The truth?
 
The truth is you can definitely see a difference in colour / refraction on the burned area of the disc (the underside of course, not the label side)
They aren't 'etches' per se, but they are microscopic spiral lines (working from the inside, out) where the dye inside the disk has been bubbled by the laser, creating the pits and lands that the laser reads as 0 s and 1 s. Angle the disk against the light and you can see the difference between Data and non burned areas (all data are ones and zeros, music, files, whatever). So, she's right.

Commercially pressed disks use a completely different method, no dye, no burning. The aluminium reflective layer is impressed with the data pits all at one go as the disk is assembled, so commercial disks look quite different on the underside.

Now: Listen up. View this as an opportunity. Admit you're wrong, aplogise for doubting her, praise her for being right, and let her make it up to you. I will leave you to work out the details ;)
 
I use this fact all the time to check whether an unlabeled disc has data on it or not. It's much more obvious on some media than others, but you can usually tell quite clearly. Works with some pressed discs too.

A prostrate apology seems in order. :p

B
 
Yes, I can easily tell how much space a half used disc has on it - it's quite obvious.

The burnt space starts from the centre out wards.

I remember reading about people who could visually identify by sight what tune was on a vinyl record disc by looking the patterns of lands and groves.

I've looked at a few CDs and sometimes you can see stripes in the burnt data, but I couldn't be bothered to try to work out what kind of data the stripes were.
 
Jschultz said:
Is this true? How come I've never seen this?

My girlfriend and I got in a fight because she swears up and down that when you burn a disc, the burnt disc has etches in it to show there is data and music on there.

I simply laughed at her.


The truth?
Click to expand...

You go in a fight with her about that, wow.

Most disks you can tell but depending on the manufacturer of the disk it may not be as evident as some, but chances are you can still see it. I have also noticed that CD-Rs are much easier to identify this way compared to CD-RWs.
 
What I have found is that the silver-colored CD-Rs are very hard to see this on (though with patience it can be done). The purple, green, and blue ones are probably the easiest to see.

Sorry, dude, but your G/F pwn3d you, totally.

OTOH, if she's looking for a new boyfriend...
 
Jschultz said:
Is this true? How come I've never seen this?

My girlfriend and I got in a fight because she swears up and down that when you burn a disc, the burnt disc has etches in it to show there is data and music on there.

I simply laughed at her.


The truth?
Click to expand...

you can easily tell. if theres data looks like a smaller darker circle in a lighter circle. i use this when i have unlabeled discs and want to know if i can burn stuff to them
 
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