Easy Fix for Scratched CDs

NotQuiteOnto writes "Ben Hayes (om3ga) has performed an experiment as to the best method to fix scratched CDs. He set himself the criteria that it can't take longer that 5 minutes and it has to be something in his house. The result isn't what you'd think ..." Luckily, he stopped before "peanut butter."

Even Better

[Billosaur]

Just try using Pledge [lifehacker.com]. I actually did this with scratches on my glasses (the lenses are plastic) and it works pretty well. Note: you'll probably have to do it again in the future, as I'm not sure how long it will last on the CD.

Google cache of site

[laffer1]

Site has cpu quota issues... here's the cache.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:WiSKiTXvp74J:w ww.om3ga.co.uk/2006/07/27/scratched-cds-no-problem /+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_en [72.14.203.104]

I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[falloutboy]

1. Wash the CD with hand soap and water
2. Dry it off
3. Put a little chapstick on the tip of your finger, rub it gently in a circular motion on the surface of the CD where the scratch is
4. Wash again with hand soap and water

This seemed to work pretty well for small scratches.

Brasso works

[JavaBrain]

The site appears to be down? After visiting this website I've stuck to Brasso (and it really works great):

http://www.burningissues.net/how_to/scratchrepair/ scratchrepair.htm [burningissues.net]

Article Text as site is down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scratched CDs? No Problem!
Published July 27th, 2006 in Main

We've all been there, bought a preowned game, put it excitedly into the console, then shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?" as the console wouldn't recognise the game. Or perhaps you have a CD which contains important data, and M$ Windoze gives you a "Cyclic Redundancy Check" error (fancy way of saying 'Your disc is bloody SCRATCHED').

Whatever your problem is, it's caused by the same thing: A scratch. A scratched CD or DVD is just annoying!

So I took it upon myself to perform an experiment, to determine the very best way of dealing with a scratched disc. The limit I set myself, though, was that whatever I did it with must be somewhere in my house, and can't take longer than 5 minutes, including waiting time for things to dry, etc.

I thought of three main ways to cope with scratches:

1. Use an oily substance, or a gel, to fill in the scratch so that the laser goes straight through. This is the easiest option of the three.
2. Use a mild abrasive to round the edges of the scratches so that the laser doesn't get scattered as much. This is probably the most feasible option of the three.
3. Somehow take off a thin layer of plastic, removing the scratches altogether. This is the hardest, and probably impossible in 5 minutes with household items.

How a CD works:

I burnt 5 CDs with 6 songs on them:

* Kings of Leon - Razz
* Kings of Leon - Soft
* The Libertines - What Katie Did
* Kings of Leon - The Bucket
* Kings of Leon - Velvet Snow
* Kings of Leon - Taper Jean Girl

I then proceeded to scratch a few of the CDs with a pair of scissors, nothing deep, just enough to make the XBox in which I was playing them get annoyed.

The first thing I tried was plain old water, I know, sounds stupid... But the day before, I bought a game, which was scratched (not dirty, scratched). The first thing I tried was water, which I rubbed in gently, so that it stayed in the scratches, it then worked perfectly.

Next I had to rub it. The only way to rub something off a CD, is with a lint free cloth, going out in spokes from the centre.

Ok, so that didn't work too well on my test discs... Next up was, deodorant. I decided to use this, because it contained something oily (isopropyl myristate) which was dissolved in something volatile (denatured alcohol, propane, butane, isobutane, basically loads of hydrocarbons). So when I sprayed it on, I was hoping for the alcohols to evaporate while the isopropyl myristate separated into isopropyl and myristic acid to become oily and viscous, and stay in the cracks.

I rubbed it in gently, just to get it into the cracks, but not to remove it, and then let it sit for two minutes. It evaporated, and when held against the light, the "rainbows" got scattered less. It looked hopeful. But it didn't work.

Ok, next up is something I use to clean the fretboard on my guitar, Lem-oil. It's viscous and oily, and smells of lemon. I sprayed it on and this time had to rub slightly more vigourously, as it wasn't volatile enough to fit in with my 5 minute limit.

I rubbed it in, and it sort of worked. The XBox loaded the CD, and played it, but it was really crackly and noisy. So it kind of worked, but Caleb sounded pissed off and sort of like a monster.

Next I tried the method that a lot of people talk about: the toothpaste method. Toothpaste is a mild abrasive, and using it you should be able to round off the edges on the scratches. This method looked like it would work if I carried on, as the light was getting less scattered by the scratches, but I set myself a strict 5 minute time limit. To apply the toothpaste take the tiniest bit on the tip of your finger, and without touching the CD with your finger its self, apply

What also works

[EEPROMS]

I found WD-40 and 2-26 Electrolube works well with scratched DVD's, CD's.

Lasts a few hours but long enough to recover the ISO or data.

Olive oil

[mustafap]

Can't see the web site, so don't know what they did.

I've been using olive oil successfully for years. Pour a smal drop on and wipe over the surface with a lint free cloth. Recommend not reading the CD in your best drive though (although I have had no trouble)

Re:Put them to better use

[russ1337]

Caution: Plot Spoiler!!!

Next I tried a mixture of 3 parts water to one part olive oil (I know they don't mix, but shake!) That almost worked. I mean that the light wasn't scattered when I held it against the light, but my XBox couldn't read it, probably because it was yellow. This made me think that the oily/gel idea was the best way to go. I looked around the bathroom cupboard for somthing similar, and found this:

Yes, hair gel, and guess what... It worked!

I applied it in much the same way as the toothpaste, except I didn't dribble water on it. I rubbed it first. Even though I applied it to one area, it ended up evenly spread around the whole disc. I then dribbled water on to loosen it up so I could rub the excess off.

So, the secret to scratch free CDs is......

Hair Gel!-Ben

Re:Slashdotted

[TheRaven64]

Not only was it Slashdotted, but it was pulled for exceeding its CPU, not bandwidth, quota. Hopefully this will teach people not to use PHP for static content...

Re:Google cache of site

[dolphinling]

And after viewing it we find... it wasn't worth it. Just a bunch of "This didn't work. This didn't either. Nor this. And that didn't either. HAIR GEL! THAT WORKED!". No discussion on why or other things to try or anything.

At least it was short.

mirror (Re:Slashdotted)

[jaredmauch]

here [nether.net]

My solution

[Groovel76]

I used to work at PRS Guitars so I had access to 1000 - 2500 grit sandpaper (available at any auto store). Worked great! Just do a wet sanding with that stuff and you sand through the big scratches leaving very tiny scratches that don't give the laser any trouble. I would polish it with with some scratch removing car wax though the big rotary buffers at PRS worked much much better. I may have to try the hair gel for the polish next time though.

Car wax

[kalla]

Wax the surface of the disc - a decent carnauba car wax works fine. This fills in a lot of the minute surface scratches. It's improved the playability a lot of discs I had that were badly scratched.

old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[RMH101]

...also works on CDs. Turns out the refractive index of nose grease (i.e. wipe your finger down the OUTSIDE of your nose!) is approximately the same as celluloid. Hence wiping it on scratches on negatives makes them disappear. Also kind of works on CDs - same refractive index means less refraction from the scratch...

Re:Slashdotted

[Halo1]

http://mirrordot.com/stories/14b7a5a68c2b653db431b eae72d1d8c7/index.html [mirrordot.com]

Re:Even Better

[BIZKeT]

Pledge works very well. It is what I use as well as what I suggested to customers when I used to do technical support for GT Interactive / Humongous Entertainment.

Brasso - Works Great!

[tbcpp]

I work (and live) at a military style academy. And seeing as we have to shine everything from buckles to brass railings, there seems to be a odd facination with Brasso here. Someone tried it on a cd and it works! Just put a bit on and shine it up. Whipe it off when you're done.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[Lurker187]

I have never used that solution, but I do employ something similar: 1. Coat the disc with liquid dish soap 2. Rub the soap into the disc 3. Rinse off the disc 4. Dry it with paper towel It usually works.

...except I'd recommend against using paper towels. The best thing I've found for drying/dusting optical disks is an eyeglass-polishing cloth. Many eyeglass/sunglass stores give them away with or sometimes without a purchase. The old cloth kind is tightly woven and usually won't shed, but the newer ones are a fine synthetic weave that will pretty much never shed. I love them for getting dust and little kid fingerprints off our DVDs.

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[triskaidekaphile]

From your statement I can infer

1. you do not own a console game (for which discs are mandatory)
2. you have no children

Brasso

[Bluesman]

Find it in the hardware store or Target.

Use a cloth, apply Brasso in a circular motion, let dry. Wipe Brasso off with same cloth, using a decent amount of force. Brasso is a really good mildly abrasive polishing compound, and enough applications will erase any scratch.

Cleaned my whole CD collection this way.

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[zakezuke]

1. What the hell do people need CDs for?

My first car only had an 8-track player. As a result I hit some thrift shops and bought some 8-tracks. My current car has a CD player, and I use CDs in it. Software is still released on CD for the most part, and they are rather handy to have to boot a pc in the unlikely event the HD gets buggered. Laptop users "should" at the very least carry one disc with them in this unlikely event.

2. How in hell do these CDs get scratched? It's not a long distance from the CD tray to the jewel case.

Many things don't come in a jewel case, they only come in a paper sleave. Anyhow jewel cases, while they are my most used disc transport vehicel, are not the most reliable suckers on earth. Those hinges tend to break if you look at them funny. Put a jewel case in a bag, hit the bag in the just right way, hinge cracks and disc falls out. I find that slim jewels tend to be more resistant to such breakage. While I favorite for size reasons, I must admit I prefer the long box and thin long box in the fact that they take the most damage without worry of the disc falling out.

Conincidental "How To"

[rkowen]

Coincidentally there's a recent "How To" on how to fix a scratched CD
at http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD [wikihow.com]
The nearly last ditch effort is to use vaseline (a lot like hair gel).
However, it's not a long lasting solution. Just long enough to burn a new CD.

quality

[Groovel76]

When I worked there, back in 2001, the thing that was severely slipping was the paint job. My supervisors were messing with the paint mixtures trying to get it to dry quicker and applying the next coat of paint before the previous coat dried which made the paint fragile resulting in more frequent burns (sanding through the paint down to the bare wood). My supervisors were also letting these burns pass through and allow the guitar to be sold which is why I left. I was told not long after I left that these two jokers were fired when Paul Reed Smith and Dupont (their paint supplier) got wind of this. If anything else has gone downhill quality-wise since then, I don't know much about it but in my opinion they are slowly becoming another fender. In my opinion, if you want a high end guitar, go to a custom shop like Fodera (semi biased suggestion since I just purchased a bass from them). They are known for their basses but they do make guitars (though not advertised on the website because of the high demand for basses) and love to make them. There are other custom shops and I'm sure their prices are the same price as a PRS but you'll get that custom fit that comes with going with the small business who hasn't given in to mass production. Again just my opinion.

Re:Even Better

[paganizer]

I never put anything on a CD that might somehow get on the lens.
Pledge works pretty good, but I'll try pouring simmering water over them, first; IME it's the dust and crap trapped in the scratches that cause the laser to fail to read the data, get rid of that and you are go for a CloneCD session.
The most extreme solution I tried was the plastic scratch protectors; put a very small amount of vegetable oil on the CD evenly, then put on the scratch protector; as long as the CD is clean clean clean before you put the oil on, and the top isn't scratched, it'll read once, guaranteed.

Plastic Polish

[LaRoach]

Run to your local autoparts store, look in the car wax section for Meguiars Plastic Polish. Works like a charm.

Toothpaste works!

[karupa]

ive never tried all these, but toothpaste works for sure! ive recovered around 4 cd's that way.

Re:Even Better

[Twylite]

The audio CD format uses error correcting codes (See Reed-Solomon_error_correction [wikipedia.org]). I don't believe CDR data formats do (but I could be wrong about that). Anyway, it would appear that scratches are more likely to cause tracking errors than non-reflective marks, which makes it easier for the drive to access and error correcting codes and reconstruct the damage.

The result is a CIRC that can completely correct error bursts up to 4000 bits, or about 2.5 mm on the disc surface. This code is so strong that most CD playback errors are almost certainly caused by tracking errors that cause the laser to jump track, not by uncorrectable error bursts

Toothpaste worked well for me.

[pjp6259]

Wife and I were watching _Prozac Nation_ last night, when about half way through it became unwatchable. We called the grocery store we had rented at, but that was their only copy. Next we tried two blockbusters nearby, but neither carried it. Since it was our last resort, I decided to try the toothpaste trick.

What I did was apply a small glob of toothpaste, and just enough water to make it workable. Then using a clean cloth I polished the disk with the paste moving in small circular motions. I had tried this half-assed before, and not gotten good results, so I decided to really go for it this time. I think I applied paste 3 times, and each time rubbed for about 2-3 minutes, before rinsing off. Finally I rinsed well, cleaned with a cloth, and then did one final rinse and wipe.

At the end of this you could tell that the scratches didn't look as deep as when I had started. We put it back in the DVD player, and the movie played 100% perfect, no problems at all. I was amazed.

I think maybe a solution that also incorporated something to fill in the scratches might be even better. Has anyone used any of those special purpose scratch repair solutions that they sell at gaming and office supply stores?

Re:Workaholics!

[Jonah Hex]

I second this, I've been using flame to fix plastics for many years. A few words of caution:
Be sure and use a "clean" burning flame, most pocket lighters, etc have impurities that can leave residue behind. Definitely do not use a candle.
The best method I've found is to lay the object flat and pass the flame over it (as mentioned in parent), as opposed to holding the object above the flame. Since the majority of the heat (and any burning impurities) are rising upwards this gives a more even melt with less chance of excessive melting.
 
Jonah HEX

Brasso

[WCVanHorne]

I have polished many library CDs (if you want to test your method just take some of these babies out of the library and you can see what abuse really means) with brasso and it works great. I have never tried any of the filling methods. This is what I do:

-Shake the Brasso well.
-Wet the tip of a soft cloth with some.
-Place the CD on a hard, smooth, flat surface (bottom up of course).
-Tackle any deep, circumferential scratches first with a hard polish along the scratch.
-If the CD is bad all over do swirls/orbital polishing all around. Hard at first and then softer.
-Let it dry.
-With clean areas of the the cloth progressively buff around the CD in light swirls.
-Finish off with some radial buffing.
-Clean with some IPA if required (a good first step if the is just oily crud on it).
-Enjoy.

Another way...

[AugustZephyr]

Hair gel? WTF, mate? I dont use crazy oily products on my head. Here is a wikiHow on cleaning CDs: http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD [wikihow.com]

Re:Even Better

[Firethorn]

The audio CD format uses error correcting codes. I don't believe CDR data formats do

Actually, Data CD's [cdrfaq.org] do employ error correction codes, it's far more robust than for audio CD's. The need for a bit exact copy, while audio can get away with a certain amount of interpolation ensures that.

It adds up [mrichter.com] to a 13% hit for the 'true' capacity of a CD. IE a 650MB data CD actually has 750MB of capacity, without ECC.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[merreborn]

I knocked my PS2 over while there was a game in it, spinning, and it fell a good 3 feet, gouging the DVD when it hit the floor. Rebooted, and the game wouldn't start. Tried toothpaste, and the disc got a little better (the intro music started playing again). Tried some more toothpaste, and it got worse (intro music stopped again).

Then, I went to the local gamestop and bought one of those "Disk Doctor" (Same concept as this model: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00000J4PD [amazon.com] ) things, that has a grinding disk that's supposed to evenly grind down the outer surface of the disk, leveling it out to below the level of the scratch(es). I'm usually skeptical about that sort of thing, but there were some glowing reviews online.

It worked perfectly. I was stunned. I guess the fact it worked *after* having beat the hell out of it with toothpaste is even more impressive.

Re:Put them to better use

[Old Spider]

Radio stations have been using car wax to fix their CDs since the late 80s. It works for DVDs just the same. However, since a skipped bit of software data is a lot less forgiving than a skipped bit of analog sound, a data CD may not fair so well with any of these solutions.

Re:Put them to better use

[nicholas645]

Read the article this afternoon at work.

Actually used the Hair Gel trick today this evening on a Netflix DVD: The Collected Shorts by Jan Svankmajer that was horribly damaged.

Alberto VO5 Hairdressing Gel for Men. The DVD, after about 19-20 minutes was basically unplayable, pixilation, video noise, no sound, etc.

VO5 did the trick, thanks Slashdot.

Rain-X

[EricTheO]

Rain-X worked for the fine scratches on my eyeglasses. It also repels dust and water an added benefit. I'm not sure how well it would work on a CD/DVD, but it may be worth a try. Lucky for my I'm a stickler about how I handle my CD/DVD's and they rarely get smudges or scratches. Now, if I could only train myself to handle my eyeglasses as carefill as my CD/DVD's....