[kevs]

Is there any real evidence that writing with a sharpie on your media will cause any harm? thanks.

[ghporter]

Nope. The Sharpie is one of a number of similar brands of permanent marker that works fine. Further, Sharpie can be removed using alcohol-alcohol wipes from the drug store are great for this.

Just write on the TOP of the disc, ok?

(I've seen reference to making the writing balanced for discs that will go in very high speed drives, but you'd really have to write a LOT for the ink to have enough mass to throw off the disc's balance.)

[kevs]

thanks gh

[crooner]

Here's an odd one... perhaps an old wives tale, but something I've heard, nonetheless...

Supposedly, the new silver and gold metallic sharpies (an idea whose time was LONG overdue) will render a CD or DVD un-playable and should not be used to write on a disc.

Haven’t tried this out of paranoia. Has anyone used these markers and had problems?

Curious.

[hickey]

arent there special pens for writing on discs?

[SpaceMonkey]

Any water-based marker will of course be fine. That is what the "special" markers advertised for writing on discs are.

I've seen arguments both for and against using Sharpies. The most convincing argument that I read against them was a story by someone who claimed to have used a regular black Sharpie to completely cover the top side of a CD-R. He went back to it a few weeks later and there was visible discoloration on the bottom of the disc, and the disc wouldn't mount in his computer. I have no idea if using a Sharpie in normal amounts would result in similar damage over a longer period of time, though.

[TailsToo]

Never had a problem like that, and I use Sharpies all the time.

[ghporter]

I have not seen the metalic-ink Sharpies, but if their ink is like most metalic inks, it's rather heavy and thick, so it might throw the disc's balance off...

"Water based" inks don't stick to CDs and DVDs, which is why the permanent marker is the instrument of choice. Sharpies, for example use a combination of alcohol and other solvents as their ink vehicle. Truly water based markers, like Crayolas, really don't work on them.

As for using a Sharpie to color the entire top of a CD might just have put too much solvent on the top vinyl layer, and it could have migrated through and damaged the reflective center layer. Geeze, why not spraypaint the thing? If I really want full coverage on a disc, I get one of the several disc-shaped labels that are around and voila!

[tooki]

CD markers aren't necessarily water-based: the Staedler Lumocolor CD markers I got recently (mismarked at the store, so very cheap) are solvent-based.

I have also used Sharpies to mark CDs for years, as has pretty much everyone else in the USA. In Europe, people have been using their Eddings and the like. There's really no evidence that any kind of marker ink causes harm. Consider that the ink would have to penetrate through a layer of lacquer AND through a metallic layer before reaching the dye layer. I think that's unlikely.

What is damaging is any kind of instrument with a hard tip, which could physically deform the disc. So the regular fine-point Sharpie is OK, as is the ultra-fine (the one with a fiber tip in a metal collar), but the extra-fine (the one with a hard white plastic tip) is not.

tooki

[subego]

I'm a Sharpieaholic, and I've never had any problems. Silver ones included.

The silver doesn't read very well against the standard white BG though.

Mmmm... love that solvent smell.

[tooki]

They don't call that group of solvents "aromatic solvents" for nothing!

tooki