JAY EMRIE wrote in a message to PETER MAY:

PM>PM>Remember when CDs first came out, they said you can scratch them
PM>PM>and put
PM>PM>fingerprints on them and they will still play OK. Well it's not true!

PM> JE> I think it is basically true. I have numerous CDs with
PM> JE> scratches and smudges on the data side and they read from
PM> JE> multiple drives just fine. You just canNOT scratch the
PM> JE> the other side at all. Even the slightest pinhole can/will
PM> JE> render the CD unreadable.

PM>Are you talking about the side that has the label? Is is possible to just
 JE> blank
PM>out the scratch with a special marker pen?

 JE> Yes that is the side I am talking about. Hold the CD up to a bight
 JE> light and look at it from the other side. If you can
 JE> see even the slightest pin hole in the CD NOTHING will fix
 JE> it. The data is recorded on the material that the label
 JE> printing is over. Once that material is breached that's all
 JE> there is to it. The scratch has actually removed some of the data.

Thats whats wrong with two of my CD-ROMs. One is a driver disk of the type
that dealers have, theres drivers for all sorts of devices on it. The other
is a Win98 plus disk that will not read.
You can just see a tiny pinhole of light through the driver disk, and a few
more on the Win98 disk. Although they look OK and unscratched at first
glimpse.
I have learnt something here, I always thought it was the side facing the
laser that was important.
I can read most files off the disks using the DOS box 40X but my Win9X box
with a new Liteon 40X12X48X CD-rewriter refuses point blank to cooperate.
Maybe the older drives were more tolerant of defective CDs?

Regards,
Peter 
--- timEd 1.10.y2k+