So if I go into Gparted format these things NTFS, any modern OSX machine can read/write them? Your “bridge” idea is exactly what I want but when I Google it the results advertise software to download and install on OSX that makes it work with NTFS.

I really wouldn’t know since I’ve not touched OSX in over a decade.

I accidentally left a CD with a bunch of photos on it from 2005 in a shed outside until 2022 and when I mounted it, it ran great. I got back a bunch of photos from 2005 that I thought were lost. That shed gets hot as fuck during summer and then our Maine winters as famously harsh.

I was surprised the weather didn’t kill the CD so as an experiment I burned a bunch of memes onto a CD and buried it in a plastic food container. I let it stay there a year and allowed the deep frost of winter to get to it. I dug it up a year later and it was fine.

So this is just a sample size of 2 but to me it seems normal everyday CDs are actually pretty tough and stable, even through brutal temperature changes and wet or frozen weather.