Slashdot Mirror
High Volume CD/DVD Cleaning Options?
WasteOfAmmo asks: "I help administer a small software library where users are allowed to borrow CD's for a few days to install various software packages (yes, it is all legal, futher explanation is not necessary). Obviously as the CD's are circulated more and more they become more and more scratched, 'dirty', and abused looking. Eventuallly (sometimes after 1 use) the CD's begin to have read errors. Currently once the CD's are confirmed as 'bad' they are destoryed and replaced (re-burned). This system is costly if not in material then in time. I have been searching with little or no success for a commercial or mid to high volume (5 - 20 disks per day) system for cleaning/polishing/repairing (ie: removal of small scratches) CD's. I have read all about various cleaners (including toothpaste) and kits that can be used but in all cases the procedure is time intensive, typically targeted at low volume end users, and with dubious claims of success at best. What I am looking for a system that would work similar to a video tape rewinder: you pop the CD into it, hit a button, walk away; Sometime later you come back and presto you have a freshly cleaned CD. With all the libraries, video rental, and software 'collections' out there must be a better system then 'hand washing' each CD."
The NOVUS plastic polish works very well, for whe manual polishing is not a deterrent. It comes in three grades of coarseness (well, two grades plus a superficial polish). You can use it watching TV or while reading /. at work. It also does a great job on all the plexiglas that comes with all sorts of products and quickly ends up cloudy and ugly. It is actually OK to polish in a circular motion -- normally this is discouraged for fear of grinding debris into the disk.
I've tried to come up with a way of home-brew mechanizing the process, such as strapping a rag to a random-orbit sander. That worked of for all but medium-deep scratches, but wasn't much faster than doing it by hand.
And, of course, you could also threaten to penalize people for returning defective disks, which would make them more careful even if you don't enforce it (and think how nice everyone will think you are when you say, aw shucks you don't have to pay -- this time).
If it is legal to "borrow" the CD to install on the computer, it ought to be legal to simply give them away. It would be less expensive for you, once you've considered the manpower costs of recataloging and inspecting, to simply mass-burn the CDs and give them out, and not have to deal with returns. You could also charge a nominal fee, say 25 cents, that would completely cover the costs of the discs and then some.
But how about a standard dishwasher connected to a large tank of cleaning fluid in a closed circuit (you can replace the cleaning fluid every few months, and add some filters at the drain to catch the worst impurities). For extra points, replace the drawers with removable CD racks, so you can simply insert a shelf of CD's at the time... Now you can probably wash tens of thousand CDs per day...
It is the time involved with burning, lableling, filing, etc. replacement CD's that I am looking for a better solution for. So far burning replacements has been the way to go. I just figured with all the various legitimate reasons for circulating CD's and DVD's out there someone must have solved this problem already.
So far as the smell mentioned goes....have you check under your desk lately :-p
I've used these in the past to protect my cd's. you can remove them and slap on a new one when they get dirty.
(Yes, I know the submittor must have a good reason to hand out discs in physical format, but this may help.... And the subject says 'if'! :) .iso file each, then mount the files as filesystems with the '-o loop' option to the mount command. Now you can export the RAID directory via NFS, SAMBA, etc, and allow your users uberfast access to all that CD-based goodness. You can even enforce permissions at a lower directory level if you need to restrict access to certain groups.
CD Servers are incredibly expensive - espescially if you need something that serves up more than 10 or 20 discs. A good solution that I've seen work very well is to use a large, RAID-5'ed array (RAID-1 if you can afford the time to re-build the library from scratch) of 250-500GB and another SEPERATE disk for your favorite distro of Linux. (Other *NIXes should work, but I've not worked with them enough to be 100% sure.)
'dd' the cd's to a
Of course if you are not networked, this is just an exercise in futility, but it sounds cool nonetheless!