OT: CD-R/DVD Backup Disposal

[Fairlight]

Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', Kenneth Brody done said:
> 
> Go to video.google.com and search for "cd in microwave" for videos
> from people who actually did it.

Rat did it in "The Core" but I've still thought it was kind of a myth.  No
idea how reliable it is, either.  I saw references to the metal breaking
apart, but I have no reason to believe that's actually even technically
feasible--hell, microwave radar dishes are made out of metal.

> Yes, CD-Rs are "write once" media.  But that doesn't mean you can't
> write all ones over the already-written sections of the media.  (At
> least, as far as I know it doesn't.)  While you can't put aything
> meaningful over the existing data, as the old data can't be erased,
> I don't see why the data can't be wiped out by writing on top of it.
> (Like "erasing" bad data from a punch card or tape by punching all
> holes.)
> 
> Hmm..  I wonder if this can be patented?  :-)

I don't think it will work.  I considered this solution.  The problem is
overburn.  You can apparently over-burn a section of CD-R and it won't work
right.  My thinking was that if you have data written at a normal burn,
then write evenly over the top of the entire disc, you'd end up with the
overburn parts still standing out, possibly being retreivable via forensic
analysis with a reader that could compensate for the overburn.  Think of it
as typing a sentence in the centre of a piece of paper.  Then type X's over
the top of the entire paper.  You can still see where that data was.  It's
hard to read on that medium, but CD-R/DVD is just 0 or 1, so your real,
original 1's are just going to be more prominent than the 1's that were
previously there due to overburn.  Sure, you'd need a special BIOS in a
reader to handle it, probably, but in theory I think it could be salvaged
that way.

I think.  It's a logical extrapolation of what I've read about overburn.

It's also an unduly time-consuming method.  :)  I wouldn't want to take
10min to erase one DVD.

Speaking of speed...*laugh* My wife is elated that I "fixed" her IDE chains
in the BIOS.  It used to take over an hour and a half to burn and verify
a DVD on her system.  It now takes 20min for the whole lot--and that's on
only 4x media (she has a 16x burner, we just didn't have 8x or 16x media
handy today).  Oh, and she can actually type on the system at the same
time now--didn't used to be able to.  The PIO vs DMA difference is really
significant.

Not to veer further OT, but that's where I got the 10min figure, figuring
half was verification time.

mark->
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