Here is an article from www.langa.com that discusses cd failure and labels.
While I know that using a felt tip pen will not work for Braille labels, it
points out the problem with stick on labels.

That was certainly the case in my tests: I did discover bad CDs, but not
one--zero--was traceable to a specific brand or dye type. Instead, for me,
the only disks that failed were those that I had covered with a glue-on
paper label from a print-it-yourself CD label-maker kit. Several of these
labeled CDs were, in fact, totally unreadable by every means I tried
(including special data-recovery software); all the data on those CDs is
just plain gone. My best guess is the glue on these do-it-yourself labels
interacted with either the foil or the dye, rendering the CDs useless.

Fortunately, although I have more than 1,000 data CDs in storage, only a
handful have these labels. All my other CDs were hand labeled using an
ordinary permanent-ink felt-tip marker, and all of these that I tested--all
of them, including the very first CD-R in my collection--remain intact and
fully readable. Plus, because I make multiple backups of important files
http://www.langa.com/backups/backups.htm , no essential data was lost (what
was missing on one CD was available on another.)

I'd used two different brands of CD label-makers in the past, and (alas)
have no way of knowing whether only one or both caused the problem. But the
bottom line is that while some CDs with glue-on labels had problems,
none--not one--marked with a permanent ink felt-tip pen did.

The full article is at
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15800263&pgno=1

Bob


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