Most parents can relate to this: My daughter loves to watch figure skating. She often tries to emulate her favorite skater on our hardwood floor. One day she was doing some serious sliding, it was pretty impressive. Then I found out that under her left foot was my Van Halen "5150" CD, and under her right foot was the director's cut of Apocolypse Now on DVD. Both copies of course were data side facing the floor.
Here are a few tips I have found that will get your favorite disc back to a playable condition:
1. Clean the disc. Even if a disc isn’t actually scratched or scuffed, dust, oil, and other surface contaminants can prevent it from playing properly. Thus cleaning the disc should always be your first move. Run warm water over the damaged disc to remove dust. If there is stubborn dirt or grease on the disc, gently rub it with your finger while you are washing it, and use a gentle detergent or liquid soap (with the water) or rubbing alcohol (in place of water). Anytime you rub or wipe a disc, you should do so by starting at or near the center of the disc and rubbing straight outward toward the edge to prevent further scratching. Shake the water off and let the disc air-dry (do not dry it with a towel or cloth, and don't sun-dry it either).
2. Try to play the disc. Many times a good cleaning is all that is needed. If, however, problems persist after cleaning, try to play the disc in a different player. Some players handle scratches better than others; computer drives tend to be best.
3. Burn a new disc. If you can get the disc to work in one player—especially your computer’s—but not in others, try burning a new disc. The disc burning utility on your computer may be able to read the disc well enough to produce a perfect copy. You may wish to try this even if the disc doesn’t play correctly on the computer.
4. Locate the scratch. Actually repairing the disc will be easier if you can figure out where the offending scratch is. Visually inspect the disc’s playing surface for scratches or scuffs. Scratches that run perpendicular to the disc’s spiral—that is, those that run generally from the center to the rim—may not affect playing at all, and in any case are generally less damaging than those that roughly follow the direction of the spiral.
5. Polish or wax. Baking soda toothpate works best at reaching the dirt or oil inside of the scratch. If that does not work, Vaseline is a good temporary fix that will get you through the process of copying the disc.
6. Bring the disc in to get refinished as a last resort. If the disc still doesn’t play correctly, bring it in to a music store (especially one that sells used CDs) or a DVD rental store and ask if they can repair the disc for you. Many of these businesses have CD refinishing machines that do a remarkable job, and they’ll probably charge you less than five dollars to repair the disc.
