[Waspinators]

Just from normal play? I take really good care of my CDs (always hold them by the sides, always put it back in the original case, etc.) but I'm always paranoid of putting my CDs in my computer drive, car CD changer, or any other CD player for fear of getting scratches on it. I mostly fear this because on many of my friend's CDs I find perfect circle scratches on the bottom that look like they were from being played.

So, have you ever had a CD scratched from playing it?

 

[nick_charles]

No, I have only had CD damage from my own carelessness i.e dropping CDs on wooden floors. Some car players may damage CDs but you can always make copies for that purpose. In 24 years of owning CDs I have very few CDs with any playback problems. If you exercise normal care you should not have any problems. I rip my CDs to MP3 format on a laptop and I have never had problems playing them back afterwards. In any case CD players have pretty robust error correction and minor scratches pose no problem. To make a CD unplayable requires some serious effort. Though if you borrow CDs from a library you can see just how careless some people can be ...

 

[StanleyB1]

Many times. My car window has seen quite a few UFO's exit the confines of my car.

 

[penger]

Well... I've scratched a DVD in my xbox 360, but I believe that's because they cheaped on the transport mechanism (according to EB Games). What they said happens, is that the laser doesn't get a good read and continuously moves up and eventually the lens ends up scratching the disk itself. Only happened once though.

 

[HiWire]

I think slot-loading drives have a greater chance of causing scratches. Dirt can build up on the "lips" of the player and scratch discs coming in and going out. Also, inserting the discs at an angle can scratch them. Basically, the CD has a somewhat soft surface - any contact with a harder substance (e.g. grit) will leave a scratch. There's no point being paranoid, but having good CD "hygiene" will prevent the majority of issues.

I haven't encountered any scratches caused by CDs being played, however.

 

[Golden Monkey]

A long time ago I tried to clean off a Sharpie mark on a CD using...um...acetone (yeah, brilliant, I know). It completely ate off most of the reflective layer, but somehow it still played.

On topic though...I've never had one scratch from a player, no, but I've had quite a few scratch from transporting in a car in their case from a broken spindle. The vibrations from driving around caused it to spin in the case, leaving those perfectly circular scratches. Only in a few really bad cases of abuse have I ever had one not play or skip though.

 

[gz76]

I've never had much of a problem with scratches. Slot loaders and discmen can be problems. A discman in particular is prone to getting grit in the transport, which can cause damage as the cd spins.

 

[krmathis]

Its indeed!
Don't know how many of my CD's which have been scratched though regular normal play. But its certainly 30-40, or more. To a level where they are barely playable.
When counting small scratches, which don't affect normal playback), there are a lot more.

They have been used in slot-loading players (car player and laptop), which may be tough on them.

 

[rei_yano]

Ive had a cd player scratch a cd before. best to either use files or make a copy.

 

[kilgoretrout]

I always handle CDs carefully, but I always burn a copy of the original. I keep the original in the case and use the copy whenever it needs to be used.

 

[zowie]

I've found minor marks on CDs that I've played a lot and owned a long time. I think it comes from placing them in and out of the transport. I've never had a CD get scratched to where it skips or fails. I think you have to be pretty careless with them for that to happen.

I don't think it's worthwhile to burn copies if you only put your discs to typical use. For the isolated cd out of XXX that may actually get damaged once in a blue moon, it's cheaper and far easier to replace it than to burn copies of an entire collection.

Back in the day, I made tapes of a few favorite LPs I wanted to listen to over and over and over, but LPs get noisier and lose high frequencies from repeated playing, CDs don't.

 

[scompton]

I've never scratched a CD that I know of. I have bought a lot of CDs at thrift stores that were pretty bad. Some of them have been unreadable in most of my computer drives. I've never had one that I couldn't get an accurate rip of.

The only CD I couldn't play was a brand new one without a mark on it. It was a bad pressing that no player could read.

 

[bergman2]

having just recently transferred my entire 5,000 cd collection to my hard drives in wavs I had maybe a couple shot cd's and a dozen or more selected lost tracks....not bad for the volume of cd's i went thru...generally, the bottom layer of a cd is pretty beefy and can take punishment...a friend of mine used to work at an audio shop years ago and to tout the palayability and characteristics of cd's he would scratch the **** out of the cd on concrete and then put it in a player and play it---some of them got pretty beat up and they still played

 

[obobskivich]

damaging the other side of the CD can damage the playback worse, and honestly the only thing i've ever seen chew up a CD was a rental car a few years ago, some chrysler, ate the top on one disc and the bottom on another (silly indash unit)

but i've never had any of my personal equipment eat into a disc, even some really old savagely nasty CD-ROM drives that i've used (software CDs, not audio collection, but same physical disc) and no damage to the disc, although you feel dirty using those kinds of drives after a while, lol

 

[Akabeth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by penger /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well... I've scratched a DVD in my xbox 360, but I believe that's because they cheaped on the transport mechanism (according to EB Games). What they said happens, is that the laser doesn't get a good read and continuously moves up and eventually the lens ends up scratching the disk itself. Only happened once though.

First time I've ever heard that. Didn't know the lens could go that far up on seek-times

For me I've never seen my disks get scratched from the transport.