[Jakets]

Okay, so here i am wanting to play some old but cool cds, as well as playstation games i have. Back in the day i didnt take as good a care of the dics as i do now, so they have a lot of scratches, some pretty heavy, others minor. What i want to know is, are there any cleaner/buffer machines out there that actually work? I hate the damn goop ones that i have to use 3 different pastes on, change the pad and crank it around like a jack-in-the-box. Hope someone can help, also if this dosent belong here, point me in the right direction please.

 

[bigshot]

Call the hardware store and see if they can get you Maguiar's Plastic Polish and Cleaner. It works as good as anything designed specifically for CDs and it costs far less for a big bottle of the stuff than you pay for a tiny little vial of the CD polishes.

See ya
Steve

 

[halcyon]

1. Take a visual inspection of the discs against light. Do you see through them (parts are scratched through)? If so, those parts cannot be fixed via consumer methods. Proceed to step 3.

2. If you have scratches only on the play (reflective) side and not through the disc from the label side, you can try various cd polishes. Most of them work via the same methods: by abrasively smoothing the reflective side and diminishing the optical impact of scratches. Some also try to "fill" the scratches with a material that has a close refraction index close to the polycarbonate used as the protective layer. The latter rarely work correctly. My personal pick for abrasive smoothers is Skip Doctor (available through many mail order places, does not cost a lot and works. I've tested it myself).

3. Try ripping the damaged discs with EAC in secure mode or if you have a good Plextor drive, then using Plextools with Recover Best bytes option. Both with the extraction speed stepped down to 4x or even lower if your drive allows for it.

4. Replace unrecoverable discs with new ones (i.e. buy new ones).

Best of luck.