OT: Another reason not to use paper labels

RalphM wrote on 4/5/2008, 9:37 AM
The subject of paper labels and their possible effect on disc balance has been discussed many times here, but I've encountered another reason to avoid them.

I received some film from a client for transfer along with a DVD of some earlier transfers. The DVD had almost constant freezes after the first 10 minutes or so of playing. This was repeated in four different drives.

I happened to notice a slight scraping sound as the drive opened on my laptop after trying to play the disc. Sure enough, when placed on a known flat surface, the center of the disc could be pushed down almost 1/16 of an inch before it contacted the surface.

The paper label showed slight wrinkling in a couple of spots. My belief is that over the years, the label shrunk and caused the dishing of the disc. I'm now removing the label (with permission of the owner) to see if the warpage can be corrected...

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 4/5/2008, 10:37 AM
I agree with the notion of misapplied / wrinkled labels causing problems. However, polycarbonate discs are unlikely to warp from misapplication or shrinkage of the labels. Most likely disc convexity is caused by uneven heating; i.e., being left in sunlight causing more expansion of the top side than the bottom. Don't try to correct this by placing the business side up in sunlight - it will eventually wreck the data.
RalphM wrote on 4/5/2008, 1:00 PM
i'm somewhat doubtful that the disc was subjected to mistreatment, and the warpage was a very uniform dishing of the disc. Sort of a petri dish effect.

I soaked the paper label to get the paper loose, then used Goo-Gone to take off the adhesive. Applied a hair dryer at low heat to warm the disc then applied even pressure counter to the warp direction. (I had tried the hair dryer with the label still on to no avail.)

The disc played all the way through, so I'm happy. Don't know if the label was the original culprit, but getting it off was the key to recovering two hours of files.
autopilot wrote on 4/5/2008, 1:22 PM
Yeah, I would never use a paper label, but I've had good success over the past few years with vinyl labels. I read somewhere that paper labels soak up humidity in the air & in a very slight way, become damp, dry again, and shrink, therefore bending the disk. I don't know how real this is, but ever since I've started using vinyl labels, I haven't had any problems. Yes, I know that most here will say print-on-the-disc, and I agree, but for me it's much easier to make a vinyl label here & there.
RalphM wrote on 4/5/2008, 1:27 PM
Hadn't seen vinyl labels, but I did notice that the no-smear labels "Tuff-Cote" from Primera (probably re-branded from another mfgr.) actually employ a very thin layer of something that resembles vinyl. If you break one of those discs you can actually peel the label layer off at a broken edge.
riredale wrote on 4/5/2008, 11:29 PM
I've never heard of Goo-Gone, but I've used a common product here called WD-40, which cuts through leftover adhesive like, well, like, uh, WD-40 on adhesive. Doesn't seem to have any adverse effect on the DVD layer bond. You need to wash the disk several times with soap and water to get the WD-40 off afterwards, though.
navydoc wrote on 4/6/2008, 6:27 AM
I actually had a label save a disk. This was for a CD with a pdf file of a USS Oriskany cruise book I sell. When the CD arrived at its destination, the disk was broken (shipped in a dvd case and bubble wrap envelope). The label held the disk together enough so that the files could be read and copied to hard drive.

I don't use labels on DVDs but CDs don't seem to be as sensitive. I use Avery's glossy white labels plus their free label creation software and have had no problems using them other than the broken CD. I also now ship using a DVD shipping box that you can get free from USPS.

Doc
RalphM wrote on 4/6/2008, 1:40 PM
Aside from the rather odd suspected cause of warpage I noted above, the issue that convinced me not to use paper labels on anything was the first time I tried to play a CD with a paper label in an automobile multi-disc CD player. Instant jam!.

Fortunately it jammed on being ingested and I could get hold of it with a pair of pliars and pull it out. Otherwise, it may have been a rather involved process. Could have been unique to the player, but I bought a Primera Pro a few weeks later...
Chienworks wrote on 4/6/2008, 1:52 PM
OY!!!!! Bad (but amusing) flashback to the times i got hired by the family next door to unjam a tape in the car stereo. Seems their teenage daughter kept switching favorite bands every week but didn't have the money to buy new blank tapes. She'd record the band's new songs off the radio onto the same tape she had used the previous 142 times and would apply a piece of masking tape to label it with this week's band's name. Of course, you guessed it, each layer of masking tape went on over top of the previous one. Didn't take too long for the stack of labels to be too thick to pass through the cassette cage inside the mechanism.

Now i have near-nightmarish visions of layer upon layer of paper labels stacked on top of the same DVD/CD-RW.