I accept no responsibility for anyone's actions
as a result of reading this crazy post.

I found an old Beck CD on the sidewalk one day several years ago,
and although it was is scratched to sheeaught,
I was amazed that it played in my CD player with no skipping.

Now as a test I tried extracting it with EAC,
and I was dissapointed that I couldn't extract the last 2 tracks.
...so here's what I did.
I took out an old undershirt and the brass polish
to see if I could "polish" the disc up a bit.
I know it sounds silly,
but my thinking was that I could wear down the plastic
so that some of the scratches were not as bad
and maybe EAC would be able to "get over it".

The brass polish kind of scratches the disc as you rub it in,
but the scratches it makes are very fine and
I suspect EAC is not affected by it.
The result - perfect wav files.
Now I can reburn it onto a brand new disc.

I am not guaranteeing this will work on your scratched CD's
and I have only even tried this on one CD,
I'm off to try it on some of my other scratched CD's
that skip and cannot be ripped.

I'll let you all know how it goes.

That's fine as long as it's the bottom side. You scratch the data layer on the top side and you're scrod.

Back in the old days I used to polish CDs on the buffing wheel at the jewelry store. Worked like a charm.

You know they sell expensive kits to do what you just did. Ask Doug...

It's amazing what abuse CDs can withstand. The laser is focused through the plastic so small surface scratches shouldn't affect it...to a point! I'm sure that a lot of people don't know that the damage to the top side of a CD is more likely to affect playback... the metal is very close to the top surface, and a scratch can easily penetrate to it.

metal is very close to the top surface, and a scratch can easily penetrate to it.

It is exceedingly easy to damage the top side of a disc. Too easy. I always thought that was a stupid design flaw... or perhaps it was intentional. Really, how hard would it have been to add a protective layer over the top? Is there any substantiated reason why they don't?

I think that this is a fairly modern problem. You'll notice if you look at your older CDs, the CD is slightly thicker and there's usually a bead that runs around the center hub. This is probably the extra layer of plastic on top. Modern CDs don't have that bead, which may or may not imply that that extra layer of plastic is missing. I think the reason that it happened was to make printing on the CDs easier. You'll notice that many CDs these days have printing right up to the hole, whereas earlier ones only had it up to the bead, except for a few that they probably knew were going to be hits, and they have a gap over the bead and then more printing inside.

All of this is just conjecture, though. And probably not correct, at that. It's probably just my New Coke conspiracy theory all over again.

I agree, they could have put the metal layer in the middle of the disc.. but also if you think about it the actual playing surface would be closer to the laser and then would skip easier if it was scratched on the bottom, but the disc could have been made thicker too. Also if you look at a double sided dvd the metal layer is in the middle so I guess they could do the same with cd's.

Ben

Really, how hard would it have been to add a protective layer over the top? Is there any substantiated reason why they don't?

Actually, they're supposed to coat the top with something. Almost all of the CDs I own have the top coated with, at the very least, a layer of silkscreen ink as part of the labeling process. This is usually enough.

However, I have a couple CDs in my collection which don't have this coating and the silkscreen ink is just the lettering without any ink background (not even transparent ink). So these started skipping eventually because of the scratches induced by my slot-loading car CD player.

Oddly, they were both B-52s CDs. It wasn't until I got into ripping and MP3s that I was able to recover them. The error correction in most of the digital audio extraction programs is enough to get around the skips induced by the scratches. I was able to burn fresh CDs from the extracted WAV files.

When one of my friends returned from Kosovo he came back with some Al Di Meola CD's for me. One look at them indicated they were probably dodgy - printing was almost completely transparent, and even the reflective layer looked uneven.

So the first thing I did was ripped the lot to wav for safekeeping. And they sit happily on my empeg now. I have played one of the CD's 4 times in my home stereo and it seems knackered already. Very disappointing, however my friend tells me it only cost about 40 pence, so you do definitely get what you pay for.

It's easier and cheaper to put the metal layer on the top/bottom. Putting it into the middle means lots of extra hassle with bonding the top and bottom layers together.

Old laserdiscs used to have problems where the layers would become slightly unstuck which let air in. The air wrecked havock with the aluminium.

- Trevor

Presumably, double-sided DVD discs will suffer from the same problems, or has manufacturing improved these days?

Manufacturing has alledgely improved enough these days for that to not happen. It's not so likely for a DVD as well because there is less flexing due to the smaller disc.

- Trevor

A certain UK high street games/DVD retailer, which offers a 10 day money back guarentee, as well as selling 2nd hand stuff, use Mr Sheen oven cleaner and a lot of elbow grease to repair damaged discs. Ahem!

Mr Sheen oven cleaner? Whoa. That stuff can get the extremely crispy remains of a pizza off my oven! I'd not want it going anywhere near my CDs.

- Trevor

I have found that if you take a sharpie to the top of the cd, if it has minor scratches. If you can hold the cd up to a light, and light comes through the cd, from a scratch. You can cover that scratch with a sharpie and 90% of the time it will fix the problem.

I have found that there is a tool to actually fix those scratches. After using fine grit sandpaper 1500 and rubbing and attempting to polish these older cd's of mine to work, I finally broke down and found that there is a toool called the disc Doctor. For cd's as well as dvd's. You place th ecd in a holder and as you turn the crank handle it runs a fine grit of sandpaper under the base of the cd removing the cd scratches. Note it will put a high swirl scratch on teh cd just as if you were waxing a car in a rotational pattern, but it does work. Used this on audio cd, data as well as playstation after the kids had got a whole of them and put a few deep scratches in them. they cost about $24 dollars and can order them online as well as most music stores now carry them here. also are available at Radio Shack.
Rob

Right, the disk doctor is the one I was referring to in my first reply in this thread.

Question: Does anyone know if the disc doctor works well on DVDs? Or if there is a similar product for DVDs?

I often rent DVDs at the video store, and sometimes I get a scratched one. It's a real annoyance to have the movie start breaking up in the last half hour of its playback. My DVD player doesn't tolerate scratches well, and the movie will begin breaking up, then the player will completely freeze and lock-up, requiring a power off/on cycle.

I have been able to get refunds for my rental in these cases, but that doesn't change the fact that I was never able to finish watching the movie.

I'm wondering if there is a polishing system that I could use on rented DVDs that leaves them in good enough condition so that the rental store doesn't even know I repaired their disc for them. If it leaves visible scuff marks, then I can't use it for this purpose.

Doug's stuff couldn't save my cd's. :-(

Calvin

Doug's stuff couldn't save my cd's. :-(

Yeah, but weren't those damaged on the top side? As I said, that's the actual data layer, not much you can do to polish in missing data.

Nope. They were exposed to Coppertone on the non-label side.

Calvin

Try smearing some coppertone on the shiney side and letting it dry. The stuff will not come off, and your CD player will never play the CD properly again.

Calvin

Tony, I'd expiriment with one of those rental DVD's. If it goes pear shaped, you could say it was like that shen you got it.

I've had luck using toothpaste in a pinch.

Stu

Well, Here's my Idea, and I'm surprised I can't find it on the net.
Everyone is farmilliar with "ronund-with-hole-in-middle" CD labels
that you can print on and put on your burned CD's...
These are great for obvious reasons...
The main thing that I like about them is that they protect the top of the CD.

Now why is it that I cannot buy clear plastic ones for my store bought CD's ?
I can get clear plastic mailing labels that I can print on... from Avery.
Why not for CD's ?
It would just be sorta like CD shaped pieces of Scotch Tape.
I think this product would KILL in the marketplace... Easily worth $1 a disc.
Anyone ever seen this anywhere.
Now that I say it, I bet you guys post a bunch of links to places I can buy it already,
Either that or Avery starts making them tomorrow.
I've had a few decent ideas recently,
only to see them implemented in mass, almost immediately.
(with the exception of one idea for a "beer fridge" that maybe I'll go into later under "Off-Topic")
Timimg is everything I guess.

Like this?

They've got them at my bookstores (Borders and B&N) back with the CDs and cassettes and headphones and storage bags and racks and whatnot.

You can get them cheap in bulk from library supply companies. Libraries paste over the CD and then slap on a magnetic strip on top of that. Pretty common.

Calvin

Doug's stuff couldn't save my cd's. :-(

Yeah... but I think the problem with your cd's was more than the Coppertone. My "stuff" got rid of the Coppertone damage entirely -- but there were still scratches that were so deep I couldn't repair them.

If you have an unscratched cd that is ruined by Coppertone, I'd like to give that a try.

tanstaafl.

Try smearing some coppertone on the shiney side and letting it dry. The stuff will not come off, and your CD player will never play the CD properly again.

!!
If you're worried about UV exposure, just don't leave them out in direct sunlight.

Whatever happened to cd's lasting forever?

I started buying cd's in 1984, and destroyed 2 that year. I learned right from the start that they don't last!