Memorex black CD-R's

Can someone please help me? Someone whom I correspond with just sent about 17 CD's on which he copied various rare classical music performances. On some of these, he simply burned his original CD via his computer; on others, he used a CD recorder to copy various old items. Some of the CD's he sent are Memorex black CD-R's; others are standard silver-colored discs. The black ones, and only the black ones, although they play fine on my regular audio CD players, will not play on my computer and I can't burn them either, using either Roxio or "Record Now". Can anything be done? I noticed that these black discs have a mirror-like, shiny surface on the bottom (even after music has been recorded onto them), and I wonder if it's that complete lack of visible markings that's making my computer unable to read them. My PC is an HP m376n (made in late 2003). I have 2.75 GB of RAM, 2.6 GHz processing speed, 128 MB video memory, and 120 GB hard drive. I don't know if the specs make any difference. If anyone could e-mail me at [email address removed to prevent spamming ], with any solution to this, I'd really, really appreciate it. If worse comes to worst, I guess I'll just have to ask my friend to use only silver CD-R's from now on, for the remaining things he's supposed to copy for me. (He's based in Dubai and says it's kind of hard for him to get regular silver CD-R's !!)

>>> Paul in West Los Angeles

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Last edited by philamber; 30-07-2007 at 10:02. Reason: Email address removed to prevent spamming

Moved to appropriate forum.

Good chance that the black CD-Rs are just plain crappy. Playstation 1 originals were on black discs but highly readable. I suspect it's just poor discs and a burn burn on them also.

What kind of cdrom/writer (brand and model) do you use in your PC?

There were some older black CD-R that could not be read or written to with older DVD recorders because older DVD recorders used one same-colored laser for both CD and DVD (IIRC).

Do you use a DVD or a CD burner/drive?

Memorex Black are usually CMC and not very good CMC..

Computer Specs say that the only burner in the system should be a 4x DVD+R/RW drive. I'd guestimate that it is the hp dvd writer 300i, which could have been either a NEC 1100A or a Philips DVD8301 (depending on if it's a 300c or 300v, respectively). The 300c/ND-1100A had quite a few issues, with some failing to read/write [certain/all] DVD media, and others failing to read/write [certain/all] CD media. This, in combination with your specific discs, could possibly make for a very unhappy drive.

This is true with the 25-pack 40x-rated "All-Use" Memorex Black discs sold at Target. The 50-packs of 48x-rated Memorex Black sold at Best Buy and OfficeMax are generally RiTEK.

In the past, prior to Memorex's adoption of its current package style, Prodisc also made black CD-Rs for Memorex.

Guess I was very unlucky then, the 10 pack jewel cases and 25 spindle and 50 spindle were all CMC

I've actually had some really good results as far as longevity and readability of black Ritek-produced CD-Rs. These were PNY branded, purchased and burned in 2000 or so, and are all still readable (whereas other discs of mine from the same time frame have deteriorated). I suspect the black plastic actually offers some level of UV protection.

i have some black arita cd-rs. All the drives will burn and read them accept my old old pio dvr-a05