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Recommendations for CD Cleaners


shoe11

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shoe, to clean cd & dvd i picked up the "cd cleaning system" at radio shack for less than $10. nice little case that you hand crank the disc around in after you spray on some included fluid. d/k on scratch repair but guess it would buff any scratches up a bit.

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Shoe-

For cleaning the easist solution is what Boa suggested, but the Rat Shack cleaner. Another solution is to go a buy optical grade lens cleaning paper (Kimwipes is a common brand, but this is not something you just pick up at your local Walmart...you have to hunt for it) then get some Alcohol to clean the CD/DVD.

As for repairing scratched CD/DVD...DON'T TRY IT!!!! Most comericial products don't really work. They basically work on the idea to remove some of the plastic on the bottom face of the CD until you have removed enough plastic to remove the scratch. Though a valid idea/approach, its implimentation leaves something to be desired. Depending on the depth of the scratch it can take considerable time to remove enough plastic to get rid of these scratches, you simply can't remove the plastic where the scratch is, it has to be uniformly removed from the entire CD. To acomplish this, most comericial products use fairly rough sandpaper, basically adding more scratches to the CD and they don't offer a method to remove these small scratches. To get the CD back to the origional condition, one must uniformly remove the plastic to remove the scratches then buff out the scratched that were created during the plastic removal process. Usually, different powders are used with water, oil, or some other fluid to gradually buff out the scratches by using finer and finer grit powder. I have tried to do this with some of our optics in my lab, but in the end, its usually easier to buy a new one. That was the long winded way to say if its scratched too bad that it skips all of the time...buy a new CD.

-Dave

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I picked up the SkipDRx from Costco. I was able to repair two of my skipping discs. The other cd had circular scratches that are just too deep (that's the last time I lend a cd to someone with a Teac cd cartridge loader thingie). I've seen it at BestBuy, as well.

The SkipDRx is a manually-cranked device that does as the others here suggest: it sands off part of the plastic. I guess there is a motorized version, too. Their website is www.digitalinnovations.com. The good thing about buying it at Costco is the easy and liberal return policy: If it doesn't work, return it and get your money back.

fini

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Fini-

SkipDRx is one of the more popular options available. It was recently reviewed on TechTV, they noted that it sorta worked as advertised. It did repair a scratched CD or two, but didn't work on very scratched CDs and the scratches that it made were clearly visible from the studio camera. IMHO, the $30+ for such a device is 2 cds and unless you have a dozen cds or such that skip constantly, then replace the CDs. (I think the motorized version of it is like $45-$50..DOH)

-Dave

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Well, I guess it depends on how much time you've got on your hands, although it takes more time to go to the store than it does to fix a cd. It's nice to not have to send another disc to the landfill, too I made two skipping cd's playable, so another way to look at it is that it's already paid for itself!

fini

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what do you guys think of this? my son is a gamer, and he got a demo disc from 1 of the rags he reads, it would not play? he went on line and 1 of the posters told him to boil his disc, he said sometimes films left in production gummed up the disc's, so we did, and i'll be darned if it did not work, i have boiled a few disc's i have rented from blockbuster and it really does clean the disc's well, and seemingly thouroughly12.gif

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On 12/11/2002 5:43:21 AM marksdad wrote:

what do you guys think of this? my son is a gamer, and he got a demo disc from 1 of the rags he reads, it would not play? he went on line and 1 of the posters told him to boil his disc, he said sometimes films left in production gummed up the disc's, so we did, and i'll be darned if it did not work, i have boiled a few disc's i have rented from blockbuster and it really does clean the disc's well, and seemingly thouroughly
12.gif

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Now that's a new one for me...

~shoe

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I'm surprised no one has said this yet. Go get some toothpaste and rub it onto the cd. It won't take much. Rinse off lightly, not at full blast, and let air dry (or if you're impatient like me, swirl it around in the air for a few minutes to fling off the water). When it dries it will still have toothpaste film on it, but that's ok. I guarantee it will work unless you've scratched it so bad that the reflective portion has been removed completely. Give it a try, it's only a few pennies worth of paste. 9.gif

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