CD/DVD/BD-R safe pens? Which do you use

[bcarlson]

I'm shopping for some optical media safe pens. What do you use? Any suggestions? If you could provide the link to where you buy them that would be nice too!

Brian

[BeckyMalaria]

For some reason the color ones are easier to find but I prefer black ink. I have used the ones from Light Impressions but the "fine" point becomes a messy blob quite quickly and writes with a thick line. It also seems to dry up pretty fast, not helped by how easy it is to lose the cap. If you put the cap from the thick side on the end of the pen, the thin-side cap gets stuck inside it! I probably won't be ordering more of these.

I recently got some from Sharpie: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PXJ26A/
The Ultra Fine tip is nice to fit more writing, but as the reviewers noted it tends to dry up fast as well. My other problem is that they look identical in the pen cup to my other Sharpie markers -- easy to make a mistake!

So, I recommend this one from Itoya:
http://www.adorama.com/FSCD10.html
It has the most sensible caps and the writing (so far) is smooth and even. The fine tip isn't as fine as the Sharpie, though.

-Becky

[ianw]

When I first started creating DVD archives the best advice for labelling them was don't!  This was especially true of for CDs, where one of the layers of plastic can be very thin, and easily affected by some inks.  The worst thing to do, which some did, was to stick labels on the disk!

Of course things may have changed a bit since then but I have never written on my archived image disks.  Instead I use pockets (http://www.secol.co.uk/DS.SHTML) to store them in that have space for a paper label.  I don't know if these ones are available outside of the UK but I'm sure that something similar must exist in other countries.  I don't use the supplied labels, instead printing my own.  It's certainly more expensive and time consuming than writing on the disc but then these are archival quality pockets.  I have been known to mis-label a disc, but being paper based this is less of an issue than having written the wrong details in ink!

I have labelled some CDs that I made for use in my car.  These were printable discs and I used a TDK pen specifically for labelling CD/DVDs.  The writing has bled out sideways onto the disk although it hasn't, as far as I know, affected the stored content.  Therefore if you are going to write on a disk make sure you use the correct pen for the correct disk.

Ian

[bcarlson]

Thanks for your help everyone. I decided to buy Sharpie's CD/DVD safe pen. Obviously I am not writing on the actual CD but the plastic spindle area. They seem to work well and passed the sniff test (I sniffed them to see if they smelled like standard Sharpie's. I was thinking, "Maybe it's the same pen but they are just trying to label it differently and are ripping us off." Doesn't appear to be the case, though they could always change the scent...I digress). I have read on Amazon that they dry out quickly though.