Home > Consumer Reviews > Memorex 32024750 CD-R, 80 Minute, 700 MB, 40x (Black, 50-Pack Spindle)

Just so you know, I bought these with the assumption that they were the silver disks listed in the picture above but I received the "Black" version and about the only thing I can use these for is recording music for music CD players and my HP 820 burner. That's it. It writes data to the disk fine, reads fine in the burner but when I try to read it in a another desktop or notebook w/o a burner, it cannot read the CD in data or audio format. I've used the silver version of these CD-R's and they work great on all my CD devices.

I usually don't review products (other than networking and security books), but I want to share my troubles with these CD-Rs.

I have no problem burning to these CD-Rs, and I can read them in any CD drive I've tried. Unfortunately, my Thinkpad a20p's DVD drive does not recognize these black CD-Rs as valid media. At work, my Gateway Profile PC DVD drives can not recognize the black CD-R either. That problem severely degrades the usefulness of these CD-Rs.

I'm curious if anyone else has encountered this problem. I shared my findings with the maintainer of a CD media FAQ, and he stated he'd heard such problems before.

These are the only disks I've found that never, never burn a clinker in my aged Iomega CD burner. I've tried other brands -- 16X Imation, yech -- and even other types of Memorex disks, and these are the best. Often with CD-R disks the problem is that the silver coating is transparent (hold one up to a strong light) and readers tend to have problems. These are pretty opaque, and I suspect that's why I've had such good luck with them. However, do NOT attempt to use the similar-sounding Memorex 16X 700MB/80 min Music CD-R disks for computer use. They are the utter worst.

As a "Memorex CD-R Media" Hater i was reluctant to buy them at first. Now im buying my second set of them because I loved the way they looked, and performed. On the technical part, I can say they seem to be made different from the regular white label ones, because on these ones the label didn't peel off after a month. I had no problem playing them on my mp3/car stereo, home stereo, DVD_ROM drive, home theather, not even on my sister's 5 year old boom box. A+, very impressive media.

I have used alot of different types of burnable CD-Rs already, buying in both 50 and 100 lot spindles, from different manufactures. I have used them to back up my cd collection, my pictures and to back up stuff on my computer. And not once have I had the problems that I've had with these black discs. The burner simply refuses to recognize them. I tried the first one, figured it was simply a bad one, tried the next one, even went to the middle of the stack and pulled one out. Not one of them was recognized!
What is the problem? And why isn't there a warning of some sort. I read alot of good things about these "black" cd-rs, about the sound quality and such. And now find out its nothing but a selling hype. I am extremely disappointed.