This summer I spent time searching for a file which had inadvertently been archived onto a DVD some time in the past. Since there was a brief description of what was burned onto many archive disks, it was possible to narrow down the number of possible disks to a handful. While searching for them, I spotted these 
- and was immediately intrigued as I had no recollection of ever having used gold coloured DVD blanks.
Closer inspection revealed the colour to be more of a coppery tone. Odd. What was not encouraging was their appearance out of the paper sleeves...
They had to be tested of course, and not unexpectedly, were both unreadable.
What happened? It turned out that both disks had been stored at the front of a semi transparent plastic storage drawer which had been exposed to direct sunlight for a part of each spring/summer/fall cycle for the past few years, and heat & light caused a change to the dye, rendering them unusable.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending - a little paranoia meant that there existed second copies of each tanned disk on different brands of media, and additional good copies were made from those to replace the faulty disks. Now, where did I put those M-discs...
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