Teen Tech

OK, so yesterday, I got two copies of the same game, and neither of them worked because of scratches and such. So, I’m going to go through some things that worked and some that didn’t. First thing first, a little anatomy of the CD. NONE of the data is stored on the plastic of the disc, or the part that gets scratched. All of the data is stored on an extremely thin piece of aluminum sandwiched between the plastic that gets scratched, and a piece of acrylic under the layer. If you scratch the bottom of a disc, it can still be technically used.  So, with that, what does a scratch do? A scratch simply screws with how the CD or DVD drive’s laser bounces off of the back of the label where the disc is. If the laser beam is reflected back at an improper angle, the drive can not read the disc. So, if you buffer out the scratches, it can then read the disc like usual. So, I tried a few things on test discs (discs that were obsolete that I never used, or were broken).

• Drywall Sandpaper. Yes, I tried drywall sandpaper. It smooths Drywall, why not a disc? Well, something about drywall being made of Gypsom and not Plastic may have something to do with it.
• Frying Pan. I thought that maybe if I heated up the plastic enough, the scratches would smooth over. All that I succeeded in doing was warping the test disc.
• Professional Scratch Remover. First off, this stuff is messy, and doesn’t work as well as most people think. It was crap. I didn’t like it, and I don’t suggest it unless as a last resort.
• Car Wax. I found a thing of Turtle Wax in the basement. It worked wonders on the test disc, and then I took it to the Halo 2 Disc that refused to work, and it worked perfectly. It takes a little elbow grease and a soft applicator cloth, otherwise, it will cause more scratches, but it worked the best. If you deal with a lot of scratched discs, I suggest a thing of Car Wax. Works wonders.

Well, these are the ways that I attempted to get scratches out of discs. I wouldn’t suggest the first two, but the last two are OK to use.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 7:31 am and is filed under Guides. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.