Easy Fix for Scratched CDs

NotQuiteOnto writes "Ben Hayes (om3ga) has performed an experiment as to the best method to fix scratched CDs. He set himself the criteria that it can't take longer that 5 minutes and it has to be something in his house. The result isn't what you'd think ..." Luckily, he stopped before "peanut butter."

Comments

Put them to better use

[ExE122]

I tried a similar experiment but instead I used CDs that did play Kings of Leon to see if I could get them to stop.

I tried putting them in the microwave, throwing them across the room, smashing them with my head, and then eating them.

It worked! I never had to listen to the Kings of Leon again...

--
"A man is asked if he is wise or not. He replies that he is otherwise" ~Mao Zedong

Re:Put them to better use

[russ1337]

Caution: Plot Spoiler!!!

Next I tried a mixture of 3 parts water to one part olive oil (I know they don't mix, but shake!) That almost worked. I mean that the light wasn't scattered when I held it against the light, but my XBox couldn't read it, probably because it was yellow. This made me think that the oily/gel idea was the best way to go. I looked around the bathroom cupboard for somthing similar, and found this:

Yes, hair gel, and guess what... It worked!

I applied it in much the same way as the toothpaste, except I didn't dribble water on it. I rubbed it first. Even though I applied it to one area, it ended up evenly spread around the whole disc. I then dribbled water on to loosen it up so I could rub the excess off.

So, the secret to scratch free CDs is......

Hair Gel!-Ben

Re:Put them to better use

[pookemon]

But, doesn't that mess up your hair?

Re:Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can use the new plextor eraser:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/08/03/plextor_pr eps_plexeraser/

It will probably take care of the scratches but retrieving any data that
was on it will probably be rather difficult.

Re:Put them to better use

[Gadgetfreak]

Hair gel?

Re:Put them to better use

[orangesquid]

A problem that I see much more often than scratched plastic is scratched foil.
I wonder to myself---why isn't the top layer of the CD coated with another layer of plastic?
The foil is pretty much exposed to any particles... a thin layer of paint isn't going to do much.
The CD cases (the big book-like things, not jewel cases) always seem to accumulate little particles in the sleeves, which will rub against the foil, and scratch it, or worse, make it start coming off. This happens especially with cheap CDRs (also, exposing CDRs to heat tends to make the foil start cracking). I don't understand why the data layer isn't well-protected on BOTH SIDES. :(
I guess the solution to things rubbing against the disc would be to use only jewel cases, as they suspend the disc in air so that particles wouldn't be forced up against it, but, I can't carry around huge crates filled with jewel cases everywhere I go.
Perhaps the best solution is to keep original CDs in jewel cases, never use cheap CDRs, and only carry around copies of CDs/CDRs in the big CD books, and keep a portable air-can or hand-held vacuum handy to suck dirt out of the case every time it's opened/closed, and never leave it open (just open it to take something in/out, then immediately close it), and never put anything heavy on top of the case (it could press particles that are in the case into the foil).

Is there a better option? I've lost so many things this way... Are there CDR manufacturers that put extra layers of paint or a thin layer of plastic on the top of the CDR? I seem to recall some audio CDs I own having a layer of plastic overtop of the foil (especially older ones), but most don't seem to.

Re:Put them to better use

[peterfa]

Thank you. The website is suspended because it sucked up too many resources on its host.

Re:Put them to better use

[CityZen]

A better option? Sure: don't use them!
Copy them all to hard disk, then store them away.

If you want media with plastic on both sides, use DVDs instead.

Re:Put them to better use

[jridley]

A problem that I see much more often than scratched plastic is scratched foil.
You must be using some pretty crappy discs, or you're stepping on them or something. I've burned easily 5000 CDs and probably 2000 DVDs, and have several thousand in my house.

I've NEVER seen scratched foil, except one time when I bought some insanely cheap shit discs from OfficeMax; the foil literally flaked off before I even burned some of them. I wound up throwing almost 200 of them away without using them.

Other than that, I've seen precisely zero cases of scratched foil. Of course, I don't keep my CDs on the floor of my car and not in a case, so that could be my problem.

Re:Put them to better use

[orangesquid]

I have scratched foil on commercial audio CDs that I bought recently and have only ever kept in a jewel case or CD book, never exposed to heat, never left out not in a case, etc.
The flaking occurs pretty often on really cheap CDRs, I think, but I've also seen flaking and chipping on name-brand CDRs, and I do try to take good care of them.
Do you keep your CDs/DVDs in the CD books, or just in jewel cases?

Re:Put them to better use

[skuzzlebutt]

Yes, those little bastards...I used to buy the generic disks with all silver (no printing or mther markings) on top, and I would estimate a 40% 2 year scratch rate with them...the ones with white paint on top seem to hold up well (memorex comes to mind); definitely one of the situations where it is worth the extra money for a little more quality

Re:Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the 'spoiler', for, as usual: the site went from Zero to Slashdotted in no comments at all. So this has mirrored what we want to know and saves time.

Re:Put them to better use

[jridley]

CD books, but they're for home use so they sit inside and don't get dirty. Also they're on shelves unless being leafed through so they're not in a car vibrating and letting the dirt grind in.

Re:Put them to better use

[elessar12]

Do I need to use a specific brand of Hair Gel? Do I need to spend big bucks on Salon type hair gel or would economy size no-name hair gel do the trick??? Maybe if the site wasn't destroyed in an internet traffic accident. Newsflash: The slashdot train runs over yet another site - website is in critical condition but doctors expect it to live once a day goes by and no one cares anymore.

Re:Put them to better use

[buswolley]

Once I inherited a box full of mariachi music cds. I played indoor baseball with them. Ahh, those were the days.

Re:Put them to better use

[maxume]

Big portable hard drives are the other way. If you want music without fuss, an 80 gig ipod, or whatever, is 'only' about one hundred cds, uncompressed.

Re:Put them to better use

[ottothecow]

This guy does realize that many of the xbox revisions out there are notoriously bad with burnt cds right? burnt disks arent as reflective for the most part and as part of a way to reduce piracy, many of the xboxes out there respond very poorly to anything thats not pressed. This is why when you are installing xbox linux or something on a system where you havnt swapped drives or increased laser power, you ahve to use a CDRW to guarantee a higher success rate. There is now some higher quality CD media out there which reads ok but I can imagine that it would respond worse to scratching in an xbox than say...any modern audio-cd player which is set to solely read what it is fed and pull out intelligible audio.

When you are going to do a test like this, you should use the proper equipment (either a real CD player or a computer with a drive that is tested-accurate and then measure error rate with EAC or something)

Re:Put them to better use

[Old Spider]

Radio stations have been using car wax to fix their CDs since the late 80s. It works for DVDs just the same. However, since a skipped bit of software data is a lot less forgiving than a skipped bit of analog sound, a data CD may not fair so well with any of these solutions.

Re:Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

Since that was even too much of the article to read, was the answer toothpaste? Because I thought that everyone had known toothpaste to be the answer for years. Even works on CDs that have been worked over with a box cutter, sometimes.

Re:Put them to better use

[nicholas645]

Read the article this afternoon at work.

Actually used the Hair Gel trick today this evening on a Netflix DVD: The Collected Shorts by Jan Svankmajer that was horribly damaged.

Alberto VO5 Hairdressing Gel for Men. The DVD, after about 19-20 minutes was basically unplayable, pixilation, video noise, no sound, etc.

VO5 did the trick, thanks Slashdot.

Re:Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

My only problem with that is the Top Five Failure list: removable media, monitors, hard drives, printers, cables. One of the reasons removable media fails so often is that it's carted around everywhere... do that to a hard drive and you're really asking for trouble, IMHO...

Re: Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

Poit!

Here is what I do. I take my discs out, put them UPSIDE DOWN in the jewel box so as to protect the fragile top layer, then I get out my handy Sharpie and write on the well-protected side what the disc is.

My "When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight And He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand And Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights And If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land And If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right" album doesn't play very well anymore, though.

I know what you are thinking, 'No great loss'.

Re:Put them to better use

[RobotRomance]

Some ideas:

Foil Protection:
#1 Polyurethane, the stuff used for wood and floors
#2 Silkscreen acrylic ink
#3 UTEE, "Ultra Tough Embossing Enamel" craft embossing powder(think it's the same stuff as powder coat paint), uses a clear "ink" glue to make powder stick and use heat gun to melt shiny.
#4 buy a CD/DVD lable thing at Staples or Office Max
#5 buy quality stuff to save/copy your most important data

Scratched plastic:
#1 see #1 above, some scratches might need light sanding?
#2 Iron or heat gun scratches away?
#3 Try clear UTEE?

Some type of spinning should probably be used to give the disc a thin layer that dries fast. And being in a dust free environment couldn't hurt.

Might want to try this on throw away AOL discs. On second thought, maybe not, you don't want to play around with AOL discs when data installing is involved!

--ED

Re: Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, Tidal is pretty good, but When the pawn... is also pretty cool =)

Re: Put them to better use

[gidds]

Erm... there is plastic on top of the foil, isn't there? It's just much much thinner than that underneath. Because of that, I suspect it's also much more affected by the usual variations in thickness. In any case, discs are indeed much more susceptible to damage on the top than underneath.

I don't know any particularly good solutions to this. Stick-on labels might help to prevent scratches and similar damage, but ISTR hearing that in the long term, labelled CDRs lasted less well, possibly because as the label ages it starts to pull the top layer off the disc. Keeping them in jewel cases is good advice, of course; I don't know of anything else worth recommending. (Other than ripping them to HD and not touching them thereafter!)

Re:Put them to better use

[Anonymous Coward]

No no. That was the whole point. You find something really sensitive and picky and get it to work on that. If it works on that, then the same method will almost be guaranteed to work on less sensitive things. A computer CD-ROM is the worst possible choice since most these days are burners, which are supposed to be designed to be extremely forgiving of low quality media (gee, I wonder why?) A real CD player is also pretty bad since it will forgive any scratches it finds and keep going and unless you are an audiophile you may not even hear the effects of minor scratches at times. Remember, audio discs lack CRC data, so the only way you can really quality check those is just to use something that tells you how much trouble the drive itself is having (which EAC can do via C2 and such methods.) As far as I know no actual CD players do this. Either way, CD players and computer CD-ROMs tend to both be too forgiving. If you must use a computer, I say carefully take apart the drive and turn DOWN the laser intensity until you get it where it reads a perfect disc without a complaint but even the slightest scratch causes problems (you may not be able to achieve this at all, but, better to shoot for it than to just rely on a drive that is designed to handle low quality media to accurately tell you how readable a scratched disc is.)

Something like a console designed to make users suffer for daring to use burned media sounds like a great test to me. A probably fairly cheap drive already tuned to be unforgiving of less than perfect media makes a great test of whether the media can be recovered or not.

Re:Put them to better use

[andrewman327]

I disagree. By trying to make a disc work in a more difficult enviroment the tester is assuring that his solution works as well as possible in the worst enviroment.

Re:Put them to better use

[ottothecow]

but they didnt pick a "more difficult" environment such as a cheap CD player, they picked an environment with a perfectly good DVD drive that has been modified (laser intensity) so as NOT to work with CDRs. Xboxes can be very finicky with the disks, readability often varies between samples burned on the same brand media. It's not simply a difficult environment, it is one designed not to function...it would be fine if the did it with an xbox and pressed CDs.

Also, I would say that teh initial testing should be done on a relatively good piece of hardware so as to control for error. Once you have the solution that works the best for you, you can then see how bad the hardware can get before it fails but it only makes sense to make sure it works in the controlled environment before sending it out into the wild.

Even Better

[Billosaur]

Just try using Pledge. I actually did this with scratches on my glasses (the lenses are plastic) and it works pretty well. Note: you'll probably have to do it again in the future, as I'm not sure how long it will last on the CD.

Re:Even Better

[cerberusss]

Just try using Pledge.

Or, if that's not available, use K-Y Jelly!!

Posting anon for obvious reasons... Oh and you have to put it ON THE CD

Re:Even Better

[grub]

I'll second that!

Several years ago I was returning some DVDs I had rented (this was before BitTorrent ;)) and saw the clerk using Pledge on a DVD. I asked aboutit and she said it's the best way to reduce minor scratches and scuffs. I've been doing that since.

Re:Even Better

[cerberusss]

Note to self: check "Post Anonymously" if I say so in the post.

Re:Even Better

[BlueShirt]

When I was fishing a few eeks ago, I accidently sprayed DEET (mosquito repellent contained in Deep-Woods Off) on one of my glasses' lens, which is plastic. I immediately dunked it in the lake and put them back on. I thought I had lost a lense but then I saw that the DEET had removed all the scratches on that lens. I haven't tried it on the other lens yet, but I will certainly give it a shot once I have my new glasses. I'm thinking of trying it on my scratched CDs, too.

Re:Even Better

[BIZKeT]

Pledge works very well. It is what I use as well as what I suggested to customers when I used to do technical support for GT Interactive / Humongous Entertainment.

Re:Even Better

[prell]

Actually, olive oil is better than lube. It doesn't dry out at all. Don't use it with a condom, though: it eats latex!

Re:Even Better

[gEvil (beta)]

I don't wanna know how you figured this one out. I imagine it involves something along the lines of, "Oooooh, shiny...Hey look, a hole!"

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

No need to be ashamed. We already knew you were a wanker. Everyone does it. I prefer Astroglide, myself.

Re:Even Better

[famebait]

I've also tried various filling-in materials: chapstick, polishing wax, etc. They all seem to work as long as you can get the excess off cleanly. But I'm not certian if they work for the reason we like to think. One experiment left the scratch very visible, but the CD still working better. That got me wondering. So I tried filling with a positively opaque crayon (wiping away excess), and that worked too. I figured it could be done even quicker if I could skip the cleaning up, so I tried with a black fine-line felt marker, simly drawing a thin line on top of the scratch, and guess what: it not only worked fine, it could handle much larger defects than nothig else had been able to fix (well, actually there was a barely audible artifact, but aleast it played).

It has to be sad: this was on music CDs, so you can lose quite a lot of bits without serious harm to the result (and even a slightly audible tick is something you can live with), so it's not a fir comparison to software. But it did make me wonder: do all those remedies really help the machine read more bits correctly by repairing the refrective plane, as it is tempting to believe? Or do they simply allow the built in error correction do its job, by blocking the area where the (clear but warped) surface of the sratch would otherwise make the laser lose its tracking?

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh and you have to put it ON THE CD"

Ok. I tried that.. but the hole is still too small. Should I try it with a CD from somewhere other than Virgin Music?

Re:Even Better

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Or, if that's not available, use K-Y Jelly!!

Nah, try using Astroglide for a longer-lasting treatment..

Re:Even Better

[From A Far Away Land]

So does this mean the Goatse guy was just trying to find a way to fix his CD scratches?

-Posting anonymously for obvious reasons, too.

Re:Even Better

[drooling-dog]

For shallow scratches, you don't need anything but your finger and a cloth (like part of your t-shirt). Just rub it out with a perpendicular motion like you would a scratch on your car.

Re:Even Better

[paganizer]

I never put anything on a CD that might somehow get on the lens.
Pledge works pretty good, but I'll try pouring simmering water over them, first; IME it's the dust and crap trapped in the scratches that cause the laser to fail to read the data, get rid of that and you are go for a CloneCD session.
The most extreme solution I tried was the plastic scratch protectors; put a very small amount of vegetable oil on the CD evenly, then put on the scratch protector; as long as the CD is clean clean clean before you put the oil on, and the top isn't scratched, it'll read once, guaranteed.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean on the hub hole, right?

Re:Even Better

[rubycodez]

Oh...and you should use fresh, clean jelly FROM THE CONTAINER

posted anonymously to avoid embarassment

Re:Even Better

[Easy2RememberNick]

What ever made you think of using K-Y Jelly as a crack filler?

Re:Even Better

[lixee]

Cool! I'll go get me a nano now that I know how to fix scratches.

Re:Even Better

[maxwell demon]

posted anonymously to avoid embarassment

So what does it look like if you post non-anonymously? :-)

Re:Even Better

[denali99755]

yeah, uh...DEET actually dissolves plastic polymers, so yes, it will remove the scratches. however, it will also change your prescription if you do it enough--less lens means altered refraction. so be careful.

Re:Even Better

[Twylite]

The audio CD format uses error correcting codes (See Reed-Solomon_error_correction). I don't believe CDR data formats do (but I could be wrong about that). Anyway, it would appear that scratches are more likely to cause tracking errors than non-reflective marks, which makes it easier for the drive to access and error correcting codes and reconstruct the damage.

The result is a CIRC that can completely correct error bursts up to 4000 bits, or about 2.5 mm on the disc surface. This code is so strong that most CD playback errors are almost certainly caused by tracking errors that cause the laser to jump track, not by uncorrectable error bursts

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need lube if you're fucking a guy, girls have lube built-in. Get a girl, save your money.

Re:Even Better

[poliopteragriseoapte]

This is similar to how you fix scratches or defects on telescope or camera lenses. The problem in even a large scratch or defect is not the 1% of lens area that will be unable to gather light. Rather, it is the fact that light is scattered all around by the defect, lowering overall contrast. So what you do is paint the defect black. This way, you lose an insignificant amount of light, but the contrast of the image is unaffected.

Perhaps for CDs there is a similar phenomenon. I am not sure how the error correction in a CD works, I am not sure whether it has the problem of "identifying" errors - I thought it simply applied to the data stream a standard decoding transform based on distance to a correct codeword. So perhaps part of the benefit of painting the defect black is that it cuts down on reflections, so that you can read neighbouring areas of the CD better?

Re:Even Better

[Gilmoure]

girls have lube built-in.

Not if they're used up or you're seventh in line.

Re:Even Better

[fbjon]

Meh, I don't need no steenkin' lubes, works best without!

I mean, I don't have any scratch marks.

On my cd's. I mean.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Get one that isn't dried up then. (Hint: Bingo and the retirement home bar aren't the best places to troll for women!)

And as for being 7th in line: fucking charming! (then again, the other six guys may have left something behind which will ensure she's not dry)

Re:Even Better

[TubeSteak]

But it did make me wonder: do all those remedies really help the machine read more bits correctly by repairing the refrective plane, as it is tempting to believe? Or do they simply allow the built in error correction do its job, by blocking the area where the (clear but warped) surface of the sratch would otherwise make the laser lose its tracking?

I imagine you could find out by using cdparanoia http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/ or EAC http://exactaudiocopy.de/

EAC will tell you exactly where it has trouble reading sectors & you can set how many times it'll retry.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Been doing this for years, it works great.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

You only need lube if you're fucking a guy, girls have lube built-in. Get a girl, save your money.

Depends where you're fucking her. And believe me, it's worth spending a few bucks.

Re:Even Better

[frostoftheblack]

Hasn't DEET been shown to cause cancer in babies or something?

Oh oh, I get it. Fishing a few EEKS ago.

Re:Even Better

[Cornflake917]

DEET is 1337

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Clay-magic, or similar products for getting scratches out of car finishes, works well too.

Re:Even Better

[Firethorn]

The audio CD format uses error correcting codes. I don't believe CDR data formats do

Actually, Data CD's do employ error correction codes, it's far more robust than for audio CD's. The need for a bit exact copy, while audio can get away with a certain amount of interpolation ensures that.

It adds up to a 13% hit for the 'true' capacity of a CD. IE a 650MB data CD actually has 750MB of capacity, without ECC.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self: check "Post Anonymously" if I say so in the post.

Haw haw, you're a perv.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

something like this

Re:Even Better

[indytx]

I don't wanna know how you figured this one out. I imagine it involves something along the lines of, "Oooooh, shiny...Hey look, a hole!"

Ya, Baby. It CAN fix anything.

Re:Even Better

[homesteader]

It's what he happened to have on hand.

Re:Even Better

[theshowmecanuck]

too funny

Re:Even Better

[LouisZepher]

Pretty much any type of oil or grease will dissolve latex. That's why most "personal lubricants" are water-based.

Interestingly, I work at a restaurant, and one of the banes I deal with his having to constantly change gloves, not for want of sanitation (which I do heed, btw), but because the pulled-pork (it's a southern thing *shrugs*) grease will eat the glove quickly. However, one night, I accidentally dropped a glove in the deep-fryer and nothing happened to it at all. No melting, no warping, etc, and the grease is vegetable-based.

Re:Even Better

[cosmicj]

Oh, so Anon = cerberusss (660701) ... You spoiled it for everyone!

Re:Even Better

[cyberianpan]

I'm not sure I get this filling-in business ? In essence the PVC covers the media layer. When the PVC is scratched it becomes partially opaque as it scatters the laser. For deep scratches my solution is a very sharp knife & a magnifying glass. I excavate/remove the "impacted/crushed" material in the scratch. Then voila the media layer is readable again.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody else notice that in the toothpaste picture it looks like he really "likes" the kings of leon?

-RadioElectric

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, what is "Pledge"?

Re:Even Better

[Namronorman]

http://www.pledge.com/

Most of the times I see Pledge, it's just furniture (usually wood) duster/polisher. Kind of like the Old English Furniture care stuff.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Latex rubber gloves were fairly useless when I worked as an auto mechanic. The oil would dissolve them pretty fast. For that reason, we used nitrile rubber gloves instead, which would last all day on an average workload.

  Funny sidenote: I was the first guy to start wearing gloves on our crew, and some of the other guys gave me crap at first. "Aw, whatsamatter? Afraid to get our widdle fingers dirty?" But after a couple weeks they realized how convenient it was to just whip your gloves off and not have to scrub for five minutes, especially with short lunch breaks, and then suddenly they were all "Hey! We need another box of gloves down here!"

Re:Even Better

[inKubus]

Hmm, interesting. Why doesn't the music industry provide an online database of music bits, and if you have the CD but it gets damaged, you can read off what you can, then replace the bits with stuff from their archive (not unlike in Jurassic Park, where they replaced the missing "dino-dna" with frog DNA.)

Oh wait, this is the music industry.

Re:Even Better

[maxume]

Of course, it is perfectly safe to put DEET on your skin.

Re:Even Better

[rapidweather]

I tried Pledge on scratched plastic glasses, it looks good as long as you don't wipe it off. If you do, then the scratches are visible again. Could go around with a dab of Pledge on them, and hope it does not run down and make a mess.

Re:Even Better

[Trogre]

Yes, but for the love of all things don't go near one with a BMG label, for obvious reasons.

Re:Even Better

[F34nor]

So is olive oil a lube again?

Re:Even Better

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

this topic has come up on /. before. Toothpaste and other abrasives actually put small scatches on the surface that forces the cd player to focus better(more accuratly) when you put the CD in.

Re:Even Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Just pick the scabs and let the pus flow!

Slashdotted

[Lithgon]

And there goes another victim of slashdot.

Re:Slashdotted

[jaredmauch]

If someone can email me a tgz or similar i'll put the mirror up.

Re:Slashdotted

[TheRaven64]

Not only was it Slashdotted, but it was pulled for exceeding its CPU, not bandwidth, quota. Hopefully this will teach people not to use PHP for static content...

Re:Slashdotted

[Halo1]

http://mirrordot.com/stories/14b7a5a68c2b653db431b eae72d1d8c7/index.html

Re:Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to using MirrorDot?

Re:Slashdotted

[slackmaster2000]

I can't believe what I'm seeing, but it looks like this example has taught everyone to stop using PHP for static content! All the bloggers of the world have gone back to using Microsoft Frontpage to create static websites full of bad code and broken templates! This is good news for Slashdot readers, as it should allow at least a half dozen more people to access content before a site on a shared host gets yanked for exceeding its resource quotas.

Re:Slashdotted

[PitaBred]

Hell, use PHP for static content. Just figure out how to run it correctly. You don't need insane loops or anything for relatively static content, or to do any massive processing in common headers and such.

Re:Slashdotted

[Dan East]

$s="What ";
$s+="could ";
$s+="possibly ";
$s+="be ";
$s+="bad ";
$s+="about ";
$s+="using ";
$s+="php ";
$s+="for ";
$s+="static ";
$s+="pages?";

echo $s;

Scratched

[HugePedlar]

But does it work for CD recordings of old vynil records?

CPU Quota?

[Roody Blashes]

I like how there's a "click here" link on the site. Yea. As if a million desperate nerds aren't all going to sit there clicking it obsessively because they're trying to fix the scratches on their animu hentai cd collection before they have to head for work this morning....

Re:CPU Quota?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

fixing the scratches on my anime hentai cd collection is my job you insensitive clod!

This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

[caluml]

This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

Guess we'll never know.

slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotted at 0 comments. :(

I received the following message:

[sglider]

• If you are the webmaster, your account may have exceeded for one or more of the following reasons:
  
• Your site has used more than 20% of the cpu.
  
  Understatement of the century.

Re:I received the following message:

[Anonymous Coward]

I surely did not expect that was the best method....

/.ed Already?

[Kurt Wall]

Well, that didn't take long.

Slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirror?

Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[msauve]

Let me guess. He used toothpaste.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess. He used toothpaste.

Yes, but it didn't work.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[FudRucker]

4 out of 5 dentists reccomend it.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[Auntie Virus]

4 out of 5 dentists reccomend it.

WTF is UP with that 5th dentist????

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

It works, too!

When my Guitar Hero DVD got scratched[1], someone suggested rubbing toothpaste on the scratch and rinsing it off with hot water. "Can't get any worse", I thought, and spent five minutes rubbing, rinsing, rubbing, and rinsing. The dvd looked even more scratched, and had a definite drop in shininess where I had applied the toothpaste, but my ps2 didn't complain!

[1] Nerd + rock + ps2 on table = one meter drop, and no more Cowboys From Hell (amongst others).

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[Irish_Samurai]

He prefers the term "dentifrice" and refuses to use the term toothpaste as he deems it inaccurate language. Kinda like the guys here who can't get over people using the web and Internet interchangably.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[loonicks]

You probably don't want to use toothpaste with a whitening agent in it though, since this is an abrasive and will probably scratch the CD even more.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[merreborn]

I knocked my PS2 over while there was a game in it, spinning, and it fell a good 3 feet, gouging the DVD when it hit the floor. Rebooted, and the game wouldn't start. Tried toothpaste, and the disc got a little better (the intro music started playing again). Tried some more toothpaste, and it got worse (intro music stopped again).

Then, I went to the local gamestop and bought one of those "Disk Doctor" (Same concept as this model: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00000J4PD ) things, that has a grinding disk that's supposed to evenly grind down the outer surface of the disk, leveling it out to below the level of the scratch(es). I'm usually skeptical about that sort of thing, but there were some glowing reviews online.

It worked perfectly. I was stunned. I guess the fact it worked *after* having beat the hell out of it with toothpaste is even more impressive.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[FurryFeet]

He's behind on his Porsche's payment.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[RockModeNick]

nearly all toothpaste contains fairly soft abrasive, thats what makes it gritty and makes it clean your teeth. Whitening toothpaste may have gritter abrasive, but more importantly it's full of chemical bleaches.

Re:Quickest slashdotting EVAR!

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL toothpastes contains abrasives, dingus. How the fuck do you think it works? That's what toothpaste is, and abrasive paste with flouride and mint flavour.

Slashdotted already!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have an alternate link to TFA???

Wow!

[Aladrin]

Wow, that is SO not what I thought the answer was!

Aladrin Cache for those who missed it:

"This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota"

Google cache of site

[laffer1]

Site has cpu quota issues... here's the cache.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:WiSKiTXvp74J:w ww.om3ga.co.uk/2006/07/27/scratched-cds-no-problem /+&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&lr=lang_en

Re:Google cache of site

[dolphinling]

And after viewing it we find... it wasn't worth it. Just a bunch of "This didn't work. This didn't either. Nor this. And that didn't either. HAIR GEL! THAT WORKED!". No discussion on why or other things to try or anything.

At least it was short.

Re:Google cache of site

[Mr. Underbridge]

Yeah, this isn't fair. Only Nancy-boys who use hair gel get to fix their CDs?

Re:Google cache of site

[MaxQuordlepleen]

err, or those with girlfriends, wives or daughters. Guess that's not you :)

Re:Google cache of site

[Mr. Underbridge]

wrong-o. I'm a low maintenance guy married to a low-maintenance girl. No hair product in our house. I'd rather marry a girl who looks good straight out of bed than one who takes 3 hours to look decent.

Re:Google cache of site

[Anonymous Coward]

err, or those with sisters. Guess that's not you :D

Fast Slashdotting...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, did anyone get this thing before the site died?

I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[falloutboy]

1. Wash the CD with hand soap and water
2. Dry it off
3. Put a little chapstick on the tip of your finger, rub it gently in a circular motion on the surface of the CD where the scratch is
4. Wash again with hand soap and water

This seemed to work pretty well for small scratches.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[txmadman]

And if your CD gets scratched at school, the nurse has like five sticks of chapstick in her drawer.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[Yad]

I have never used that solution, but I do employ something similar: 1. Coat the disc with liquid dish soap 2. Rub the soap into the disc 3. Rinse off the disc 4. Dry it with paper towel It usually works.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[Lurker187]

I have never used that solution, but I do employ something similar: 1. Coat the disc with liquid dish soap 2. Rub the soap into the disc 3. Rinse off the disc 4. Dry it with paper towel It usually works.

...except I'd recommend against using paper towels. The best thing I've found for drying/dusting optical disks is an eyeglass-polishing cloth. Many eyeglass/sunglass stores give them away with or sometimes without a purchase. The old cloth kind is tightly woven and usually won't shed, but the newer ones are a fine synthetic weave that will pretty much never shed. I love them for getting dust and little kid fingerprints off our DVDs.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[el_gordo101]

1. Wash the CD with hand soap and water

Just don't use Lava brand soap.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[Sproggit]

Use 3M Scotch Brite High Performance cloth.
Lint free, long lasting polymer weave.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[ben there...]

Those Windex cloths in a tube package probably work almost as well.

Re:I always used unflavored plain chapstick

[smyle]

...except I'd recommend against using paper towels.

Agreed. For those of us without eyeglasses, I've found that a soft non-aloe/lotion/whatever toilet paper works well too. Much less lint than paper towels and not as abrasive either.

...and odds are you've already got a hefty supply.

Oops.

[DikSeaCup]

Well, the server isn't really Slashdotted ... but the account is.

This Account Has Exceeded Its CPU Quota

Please contact this site's webmaster.

Wait a few minutes and use your browser's "Back" button or click here to try again.

If you are the webmaster, your account may have exceeded for one or more of the following reasons:

* Your site has used more than 20% of the cpu.
* Your account has too many processes running at the same time.
* Your site was consuming too many resources. This happens on occassion to very busy sites that have inefficient scripts running.

Re:Oops.

[varmittang]

Foot note to add.

Yeah, our server is now on fire. But don't worry, the local fire department has been called.

Re:Oops.

[Fred_A]

I thought only lpd could catch fire...

(yes I know it's an old and obscure reference and it probably has been removed by now. Puzzled me to no end the first time I saw it though)

Re:Oops.

[DikSeaCup]

See if you can find references to the old SunOS 4.1.3 man page for "reboot".

Re:Oops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, our server is now on fire. But don't worry, the local fire department has been called.

It's only +5 Funny because it's on a .co.uk domain, and your statement is thus dry english humour. Lollingtons.

Household trick

[scenestar]

For light scratches, use toothpaste.

Re:Household trick

[scenestar]

Ok, so according to this article it didn't work.

Now before i get modded into oblivion here's some stuff to back upo my statement

http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-a-CD-Using-Toothpast e

Once again, the ways to fix cd's depends on the type of scratch you are dealing with. (toothpaste to polish out scratches to floor wax to fill deep scratches)

Re:Household trick

[Detritus]

Chocolate is supposed to be a good polishing agent. I'm not sure what the abrasive agent is. I've used toothpaste with some success.

Re:Household trick

[NatasRevol]

Sugar is the abrasive agent.

Re:Household trick

[csplinter]

I use this trick, it works on light to moderate scratchs. What I do is apply a small amount of toothpaste to a sheet of printer paper, and use the paper like sand paper. This is a bit too abrasive though, so I always finish up by polishing the disk with a clean sheet of paper. Rinse in water and, good as new. Works better than any bought soultion I've ever tried.

Re:Household trick

[mclipsco]

if he used Axe deoderant body spray instead the Kan Gol "kangaroo flavor" it might work better...plus, chicks digg it more...

You could still be fixing a cd

[Whatsisname]

Wow, that site got owned in less time than it takes to repair a CD!

Re:You could still be fixing a cd

[JPC-TX]

Mod the parent up - really did lawl!

Brasso works

[JavaBrain]

The site appears to be down? After visiting this website I've stuck to Brasso (and it really works great):

http://www.burningissues.net/how_to/scratchrepair/ scratchrepair.htm

Re:Brasso works

[muleboy]

Yup, I've been doing that for a while since I found that site, it works better than anything. I've never seen a disc that wasn't repairable with Brasso (unless the aluminum side was scratched).

Re:Brasso works

[dranga]

I've been warned that Brasso doesn't work as well any more, they had to change the formula in the last year for environmental reasons.. has anyone had a problem with that? I haven't tried myself, yet.

Re:Brasso works

[dbIII]

One funny thing is I used to use Brasso on velvet as the second last stage for polishing peices of copper based alloys before looking at them under a microscope. Even at 1000x magnification the scratches are not paticularly big. The final stage was Silvo, which has smaller abrasive particles, and if done properly there are no visable scratches at 1000x magnification.

Article Text as site is down...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scratched CDs? No Problem!
Published July 27th, 2006 in Main

We've all been there, bought a preowned game, put it excitedly into the console, then shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?" as the console wouldn't recognise the game. Or perhaps you have a CD which contains important data, and M$ Windoze gives you a "Cyclic Redundancy Check" error (fancy way of saying 'Your disc is bloody SCRATCHED').

Whatever your problem is, it's caused by the same thing: A scratch. A scratched CD or DVD is just annoying!

So I took it upon myself to perform an experiment, to determine the very best way of dealing with a scratched disc. The limit I set myself, though, was that whatever I did it with must be somewhere in my house, and can't take longer than 5 minutes, including waiting time for things to dry, etc.

I thought of three main ways to cope with scratches:

1. Use an oily substance, or a gel, to fill in the scratch so that the laser goes straight through. This is the easiest option of the three.
2. Use a mild abrasive to round the edges of the scratches so that the laser doesn't get scattered as much. This is probably the most feasible option of the three.
3. Somehow take off a thin layer of plastic, removing the scratches altogether. This is the hardest, and probably impossible in 5 minutes with household items.

How a CD works:

I burnt 5 CDs with 6 songs on them:

* Kings of Leon - Razz
* Kings of Leon - Soft
* The Libertines - What Katie Did
* Kings of Leon - The Bucket
* Kings of Leon - Velvet Snow
* Kings of Leon - Taper Jean Girl

I then proceeded to scratch a few of the CDs with a pair of scissors, nothing deep, just enough to make the XBox in which I was playing them get annoyed.

The first thing I tried was plain old water, I know, sounds stupid... But the day before, I bought a game, which was scratched (not dirty, scratched). The first thing I tried was water, which I rubbed in gently, so that it stayed in the scratches, it then worked perfectly.

Next I had to rub it. The only way to rub something off a CD, is with a lint free cloth, going out in spokes from the centre.

Ok, so that didn't work too well on my test discs... Next up was, deodorant. I decided to use this, because it contained something oily (isopropyl myristate) which was dissolved in something volatile (denatured alcohol, propane, butane, isobutane, basically loads of hydrocarbons). So when I sprayed it on, I was hoping for the alcohols to evaporate while the isopropyl myristate separated into isopropyl and myristic acid to become oily and viscous, and stay in the cracks.

I rubbed it in gently, just to get it into the cracks, but not to remove it, and then let it sit for two minutes. It evaporated, and when held against the light, the "rainbows" got scattered less. It looked hopeful. But it didn't work.

Ok, next up is something I use to clean the fretboard on my guitar, Lem-oil. It's viscous and oily, and smells of lemon. I sprayed it on and this time had to rub slightly more vigourously, as it wasn't volatile enough to fit in with my 5 minute limit.

I rubbed it in, and it sort of worked. The XBox loaded the CD, and played it, but it was really crackly and noisy. So it kind of worked, but Caleb sounded pissed off and sort of like a monster.

Next I tried the method that a lot of people talk about: the toothpaste method. Toothpaste is a mild abrasive, and using it you should be able to round off the edges on the scratches. This method looked like it would work if I carried on, as the light was getting less scattered by the scratches, but I set myself a strict 5 minute time limit. To apply the toothpaste take the tiniest bit on the tip of your finger, and without touching the CD with your finger its self, apply

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[codemaster2b]

Does copyright permit you to copy verbatim his entire article?

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[reynhout]

While we're asking rhetorical questions, how do you find time in your busy life to be offended by words, much less letters?

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[aardwolf64]

No, it's totally illegal. So is the cached copy that your web browser has in it (if you could even get the page to load.) You should turn yourself in for copyright infringement. Now.

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[codemaster2b]

I am not offended by words. I express my sig the way I do because I get the impression that over 60% of people who comment on slashdot using TFA / RTFA don't actually understand what they are saying. The acronym has a specific meaning, and it generally does not fit the mood of the comment. When it does, hey, I don't mind. I mind inconsistency.

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[codemaster2b]

Copyright is only legal so far as it is Constitutional. It is only Constitutional so far as it is beneficial to the public. Please inform me as to how making web-distributed publications illegal to view on the web is beneficial to the public good.

Based on this principle alone, the poster who copied a work verbatim did so for the benefit of the public good. And yet, is it not paradoxical that this very act was illegal?

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[aardwolf64]

From your previous comment, it seemed apparent that you were against posting the text of the article online. This comment seems to contradict that stance. I was making light of your previously perceived hard stance against breaking copyright law.

There are plenty of things in the Constitution that aren't beneficial to the public in all cases (such as the right to bear arms allowing gangsters to legally purchase weapons.) The sole test for whether something is "constitutional" or not has very little to do with the public good and everything to do with the current Supreme Court's perception of the original intention of the authors.

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[codemaster2b]

True. And the Constitution itself is not an absolute authority on the public good. To put the point even finer, the public good may not even be the thing worth upholding. The true foundation lies in the principles of love, as set forth in the Bible.

I am glad to have debated with an intelligent person. On slashdot, this is truly refreshing. Good day to you, sir.

Re:Article Text as site is down...

[jez9999]

As far as I'm concerned, the fact that this kind of article is needed just shows the absolute stupidity of using relatively unprotected media. Using sprays and stuff so that your data can be read? And this is a common occurance? Seriously, why the hell should consumers have to put up with this? I wish they'd start putting out software on USB dongles instead; I wouldn't care if it was read-only. It'd be a damn sight more reliable than a CD, DVD or other similar media.

What also works

[EEPROMS]

I found WD-40 and 2-26 Electrolube works well with scratched DVD's, CD's.

Lasts a few hours but long enough to recover the ISO or data.

Re:What also works

[arkhan_jg]

Just wanted to say, thanks! Was just trying to find a way round my only copy of windows 2000 server OEM being unreadably scratched, and just tried WD40 plus a little rubbing from in-to-out with a cloth.

Worked a treat, even on the long circular scratch going half way round the disc, which are the nastiest. Just successfully ripped an ISO of it. Cheers, if you're ever in Dorset, I owe you a beer!

Olive oil

[mustafap]

Can't see the web site, so don't know what they did.

I've been using olive oil successfully for years. Pour a smal drop on and wipe over the surface with a lint free cloth. Recommend not reading the CD in your best drive though (although I have had no trouble)

Re:Olive oil

[Fred_A]

Given the speed at which the drives rotate the discs, that's what I've been wondering with all those solutions involving fluids. There's bound to be droplets that fly away from the disk into the drive enclosure.

Now depending on the location of the circuitry and the frequency of the use of "home repaired disks" this may or may not be an issue, but it certainly would make me a bit nervous...

Re:Olive oil

[TubeSteak]

Given the speed at which the drives rotate the discs, that's what I've been wondering with all those solutions involving fluids. There's bound to be droplets that fly away from the disk into the drive enclosure.

I always put 'em through a spin cycle on the dremel first.

The 1/2" sanding band fits the hole in a CD just about right.

Page Mirror

[Plocmstart]

http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/14b7a5a68c2b653db 431beae72d1d8c7/index.html

Re:Page Mirror

[Plocmstart]

Can I reply to my own comment? Anyways I'm suprised no one has tried some of the various kinds of car cleaners or waxes... really what you are doing is either trying to fill in the gaps as seamlessly as possible so the laser can read the data, or you are trying to polish them away by smoothing out the edges of the scratches or actually making the CD thinner to the depth of the scratches themselves. I'd think some auto polishes may do a good job of this if they don't make the plastic surface too reflective.

Re:Page Mirror

[amrust]

Several people here have tried car waxes (including me).

You might have your comment threshold set too high, but I've seen several comments on Turtle Wax, etc on this page.

I saw the actual site for those who missed it...

[plasmacutter]

It was semi-diluted hair gel in a thin coat on the disk..

That said, how is this any better than the scratched disk in the first place? Sure it might play once, but now you have bloody hair gel on your disk! that's even stickier and more fragile than the cheap plastic they used to make the disk.

I like my solution better:
download what was on the disk from somewhere else.

Q: isn't that piracy?
A: Does it really matter? they sold it to you on crappy cheap plastic.. it should be fair use to "repress" the cd/dvd you bought.

I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[Sporkinum]

Hair Gel.. Whoda thunk it?
"I like the smell of my hair treatment; the pleasing odor is half the point."

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[Jozer99]

What if it is software? Music is easy to replace, but finding a specific version of some obscure enterprise software is quite hard. Also, what if it is personal data? You can't download your old tax returns from Kazaa (hopefully).

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[DaveV1.0]

Bah! I upload all my personal data to Kazaa. I just name it "The sounds of balloon rubs, fingernails on a blackboard, and cats mating, greatest hits!"

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[nrrd]

Did you try the gopher, Everett?

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[QMO]

I don't use Kazaa, but if you'll link to a torrent...

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

No thank you, Delmar; a third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without bedding her back down.

Re:I don't want FOP Damn it, I'm a Dapper Dan Man!

[mongus]

Oh, you can have the whole thing. Me and Pete already had one apiece. We ran across a whole... gopher village.

teaser

[gEvil (beta)]

Since the site seems to be down, I'll give everyone a small teaser from the final paragraph: I rubbed it first.

Betcha can't guess what it is...Keep in mind his original criteria...

Re:teaser

[Jamil Karim]

Mary: Is that hair gel?

Re:teaser

[Reziac]

Um,let me guess...

"A little dab will do ya..."

mirror (Re:Slashdotted)

[jaredmauch]

here

Re:mirror (Re:Slashdotted)

[Chris Tucker]

From the mirrored site:

WeÄôve all been there, bought a preowned game, put it excitedly into the console, then shouted ÄúOMFGz0rWTF!?!?Äù as the console wouldnÄôt recognise the game. Or perhaps you have a CD which contains important data, and M$ Windoze gives you a ÄúCyclic Redundancy CheckÄù error (fancy way of saying ÄòYour disc is bloody SCRATCHEDÄô).

Remember the good old days, before Microsft fucked up the American STANDARD Code for Information Interchange?

Good times, good times.

Wow, no one's mentioned the 100% free option...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nose grease. rub your finger along the side of the bridge of your nose and then rub the scratch on the disk. I've been doing this for a decade and it works everytime.

He used hair gel.

[Rob T Firefly]

Yes, hair gel, and guess what... It worked! I applied it in much the same way as the toothpaste, except I didn't dribble water on it. I rubbed it first. Even though I applied it to one area, it ended up evenly spread around the whole disc. I then dribbled water on to loosen it up so I could rub the excess off.

I'm bald, you insensitive clod!

Re:He used hair gel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you won't be wanting the hairgel for anything else then.

Result!

My solution

[Groovel76]

I used to work at PRS Guitars so I had access to 1000 - 2500 grit sandpaper (available at any auto store). Worked great! Just do a wet sanding with that stuff and you sand through the big scratches leaving very tiny scratches that don't give the laser any trouble. I would polish it with with some scratch removing car wax though the big rotary buffers at PRS worked much much better. I may have to try the hair gel for the polish next time though.

Re:My solution

[scotch]

80 grit sandpaper from your local hardware works fine as well. Try it, you'll be surprised!

Re:My solution

[hobo sapiens]

PRS Guitars! I will be modded OT, but who cares. I was wondering, with all the new models (like the bolt neck) is their quality still up to par? Or is it slipping? I was thinking about buying one, but before shelling out $3K it would be interesting to hear an insider's perspective.

Fixing Scratched Vinyl

[Reverend528]

After years of use, most vinyl records develop a single deep scratch that spirals from the outside towards the center. I find that rubber cement can fix it pretty easily. I did this to some of my old records a couple years ago and they sound much better now.

Re:Fixing Scratched Vinyl

[b1t r0t]

After years of use, most vinyl records develop a single deep scratch that spirals from the outside towards the center. I find that rubber cement can fix it pretty easily. I did this to some of my old records a couple years ago and they sound much better now.

I've heard that your vinyl records will sound much "warmer" if you smash vacuum tubes into them.

Re:Fixing Scratched Vinyl

[Anonymous Coward]

After years of use, most vinyl records develop a single deep scratch that spirals from the outside towards the center. I find that rubber cement can fix it pretty easily. I did this to some of my old records a couple years ago and they sound much better now.

Let me guess Disco?

Cool

[Linker3000]

Cool Dugg+...oh..WTF...wrong site?

Re:Cool

[Stringer Bell]

Cool Dugg+...oh..WTF...wrong site?

There are other sites?

Solution for slot-loading drives

[eltonito]

I put a little KY Jelly on the disk before I insert it into the slot. The CD player seems to whirr with joy!

Re:Solution for slot-loading drives

[Daniel_Staal]

Dude, anyone who sees a bottle of KY Jelly next to your computer is likely to get the right idea about you...

Re:Solution for slot-loading drives

[Alaria Phrozen]

I hope I never get to the point where my first thought is:

Sticky clumpy tissues everywhere? He must have a really bad cold.

A bottle of KY on some guy's computer desk? He must take really good care of his CDs.

My wife is actually smiling around me. Those late night privary therapy sessions with Yoga Master Tod must be working wonders for her stress levels.

Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[turthalion]

From TFA:

We've all been there, bought a preowned game, put it excitedly into the console, then shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

You know, I wonder how many of his readers have really shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"... I mean, how do you even say that? Where do you even start?

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[Alaria Phrozen]

Well, just by reading comments here, it seems that before you begin you're going to need KY Jelly.

To actually start, you have a big O. After that I usually fall asleep.

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[tgpo]

Where do you even start?

At the beginning. duh

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[merlin_jim]

You know, I wonder how many of his readers have really shouted "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"... I mean, how do you even say that? Where do you even start?

The really sad part is it took this long for, out of all of slashdot, someone to bring the question up lol

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[turthalion]

At the beginning. duh

Heh. I guess a better statement would have been "How", not "Where"... but Pestie's got us all sorted out there anyway...

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[Ne-fishy]

I've generally shouted things that were a little easier on the tongue. But I have been known to get annoyed and use versions of "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

Re:Shouting "OMFGz0rWTF!?!?"

[tgpo]

Questions like that always remind me of Ghostbusters

Where do those steps go?

They go up.

Car wax

[Anonymous Coward]

I once fixed a heavily scratched CD by buffing it with the car wax I had in the garage.

Re:Car wax

[Cunk]

I'll confirm this one as well. Turtle Wax to be exact.

But I've only tried it once.

Re:Car wax

[psyjoniz]

i've used this too. thought it was pretty common sense really.. didn't realize /. needed a whole bloated article about it.

What about....

[Anonymous Coward]

In shop class we used to use car wax, armorall, craft glue mixed with rubbing alcohol or mineral oils to finish & polish cut ends of plastic, glass and polyethelene tubing. Any application here?

Slashdotted or a Conspiracy

[ACORN_USER]

Was the site /.'ed or can this be the result of a DOS attack by the music industry. I believe that news of this slashdot article got through to the S0ny dirty tricks department and that they were threatened by the prospect of consumers no longer having to cyclically repurchase their albums every two years?

Or perhaps this is a result of that devious Union of Hair Gel workers, trying to avoid longer working hours.

Either way, I'm sure that the International Association of Frisbee Manufactorers is no longer laughing.

It makes my hair stand. Another use for hair gel.

Car wax

[kalla]

Wax the surface of the disc - a decent carnauba car wax works fine. This fills in a lot of the minute surface scratches. It's improved the playability a lot of discs I had that were badly scratched.

My solution

[DylanLeigh]

Hair spray (the Vinyl kind) - spray it on, then wipe towards the spokes gently (it accumulates in the scratches).

old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[RMH101]

...also works on CDs. Turns out the refractive index of nose grease (i.e. wipe your finger down the OUTSIDE of your nose!) is approximately the same as celluloid. Hence wiping it on scratches on negatives makes them disappear. Also kind of works on CDs - same refractive index means less refraction from the scratch...

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[pedalman]

Should be able to fix a lot of CDs if you go to this person.

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[instantkamera]

I always use nose goblins myself...

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[mpcooke3]

I sure hope you don't use the same dvd rental scheme as me.

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[kuinak]

Yeah, this works great. Back in the old days when cameras used film, a little nose grease applied to a negative removed scrathes great. I was watching Lebowski last weekend on DVD when it started skipping. Popped out the DVD spread a little nose grease around...worked like a charm.

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[Danga]

Turns out the refractive index of nose grease (i.e. wipe your finger down the OUTSIDE of your nose!) is approximately the same as celluloid.

doing the same thing and dunking your finger in a poorly poured beer will help the foam go down much faster too! Oh the stuff I learned in college...

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[fishbowl]

"Turns out the refractive index of nose grease (i.e. wipe your finger down the OUTSIDE of your nose!) is approximately the same as celluloid."

I think old photographers must be a dying breed. The compatability of nose grease and celluloid has been well known for generations -- and was even suggested in books, in the area of spotting negatives. Lost art. I'm not joking.

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/archi ve/index.php/t-15124.html

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[dargaud]

The problem with this trick is that you should scan your negatives _fast_ after doing it as the grease and acidity in the sweat will eat at the film gelatin substrate (not the celluloid, but the side that actually has the colors). A few days later you can already see it turn clearer. If you have some scratched slides/negatives, the best old-fashioned way to remove them is to dip them in Tetenal Repolisan for a few seconds. This works great if the scratch is on the celluloid, but not that much if it's on the gelatin side (the information is gone anyway). Hmmm, maybe I should give it a try on scratched CDs too... Otherwise get a scanner with ICE.

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nose grease also works for chapped lips. I have an oily nose to begin with so it wouldn't work for someone with dry skin (someone else told me about it).

Re:old photographer's trick: nose grease!

[dewie]

Nose grease is even more versatile than that; a finger wiped on the outside of your nose then placed in the foam will help to calm the rampaging head of a beer that's been poured too fast.

  Note to potential froth vigilantes: it's considered rude to put your nose grease in anyone else's beer.

CD's

[certel]

Toothpaste man! Works wonders.

My xbox would be mad too

[devilsbrigade]

If i tried to make it play Kings of leon too. Yeesh. BTW, I saw an episode like this on G4 about 3 years ago at a friends house. They where testing out those "fix your cd" machines you can buy at Blockbuster and the such and comparing the results to using baking soda tooth paste (the baking soda acts as the mild abrasive in the toothpaste). I think i remember the toothpaste working a little better, although the music choice for them wasn't much better than kings of leon.

In other news ... people still use CDs

[EaglesNest]

About the only thing I use a CD for is Oblivion, Halo, and FEAR. ID Software has been kind enough to no longer require a CD be inserted just to play a game that is already on my hard disk. Half Life 2, of couse, has Steam.

The premise of the article raises two questions:

1. What the hell do people need CDs for?
2. How in hell do these CDs get scratched? It's not a long distance from the CD tray to the jewel case.

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[triskaidekaphile]

From your statement I can infer

1. you do not own a console game (for which discs are mandatory)
2. you have no children

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[zakezuke]

1. What the hell do people need CDs for?

My first car only had an 8-track player. As a result I hit some thrift shops and bought some 8-tracks. My current car has a CD player, and I use CDs in it. Software is still released on CD for the most part, and they are rather handy to have to boot a pc in the unlikely event the HD gets buggered. Laptop users "should" at the very least carry one disc with them in this unlikely event.

2. How in hell do these CDs get scratched? It's not a long distance from the CD tray to the jewel case.

Many things don't come in a jewel case, they only come in a paper sleave. Anyhow jewel cases, while they are my most used disc transport vehicel, are not the most reliable suckers on earth. Those hinges tend to break if you look at them funny. Put a jewel case in a bag, hit the bag in the just right way, hinge cracks and disc falls out. I find that slim jewels tend to be more resistant to such breakage. While I favorite for size reasons, I must admit I prefer the long box and thin long box in the fact that they take the most damage without worry of the disc falling out.

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[alexo]

2. How in hell do these CDs get scratched? It's not a long distance from the CD tray to the jewel case.

Many things don't come in a jewel case, they only come in a paper sleave.

The gravest threat to CDs in my household comes in diapers.

Re:In other news ... people still use CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

The gravest threat to CDs in my household comes in diapers.

How is Michael Jackson a threat to your CDs?

Re:I saw the actual site for those who missed it..

[Secrity]

I agree with you that hair gel is not a good long-term solution to make a scratched disk playable. TFA used test CDs that contained music which I assume is commonly available, and your solution would work well to replace the music that was used on the test disks.

Some scratched CDs/DVDs contain data that is not available anywhere else or may be difficult to find. Using hair gel on a scratched disk to salvage data is reasonable and it may be easier than finding replacement data, even if it is readily available.

Brasso - Works Great!

[tbcpp]

I work (and live) at a military style academy. And seeing as we have to shine everything from buckles to brass railings, there seems to be a odd facination with Brasso here. Someone tried it on a cd and it works! Just put a bit on and shine it up. Whipe it off when you're done.

Re:Brasso - Works Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Good old Brasso worked for me - on a couple of CD's.
Gently rubbed over the scratched area with a kitchen cloth and washed off, surprisingly gave a shiny (not the matt that I had expected) finish!

Re:I saw the actual site for those who missed it..

[PunkOfLinux]

except for console games -_- not gonna work that well, buddy

Workaholics!

[inviolet]

Wax? Pledge? Toothpaste? Buffing?

Y'all are a bunch of workaholics.

Just lightly wave a propane or butane torch over the scratches.

It works for all polycarbonates, including CDs, DVDs, helmet visors, motorcycle windshields, airplane windshields, cellphone screens.

The trick is to wave the flame over it so very very lightly and quickly, that the rough edges of the scratch briefly melt and flow.

Re:Workaholics!

[Jonah Hex]

I second this, I've been using flame to fix plastics for many years. A few words of caution:
Be sure and use a "clean" burning flame, most pocket lighters, etc have impurities that can leave residue behind. Definitely do not use a candle.
The best method I've found is to lay the object flat and pass the flame over it (as mentioned in parent), as opposed to holding the object above the flame. Since the majority of the heat (and any burning impurities) are rising upwards this gives a more even melt with less chance of excessive melting.
 
Jonah HEX

Re:Workaholics!

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit o' flame works great. I was trying to copy a scratched DVD when I read this thread. The copy failed 23 minutes from the end. I tried gel and candle wax and neither did a damn thing.

A little ligher flame to smooth out the crowd of scratches on that disk worked like a charm. Where the player just died trying to read the worst spot, it now doesn't even skip a beat.

Highly recommended. Just be judicious with the flame or the disk will probably warp.

---Rant ON---

By the way, what moron wrote the IDE drivers [for dvd specifically] under linux (2.6.17.6) so they hang the calling program for MINUTES with the machine sitting nearly 100% waiting for disk I/O?
Killing the player leaves it a zombie and the device unusable for said MINUTES.

Speaking of which, is there a conspiracy among CD/DVD reader/player software developers who don't bother to poll the front panel buttons while they're busy hunting the disk to get past a scratch? At least look at the d*mn eject button now and again to abort the operation!!! Argh!

To DVD drive firmware hackers: I'd upgrade my drive's firmware just for that feature and sing your praises from on high. In my case this is for the otherwise very good NEC 3550A.

--- Rant OFF--- ...John

Re:Workaholics!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried this, and had to put out my Britney Spears CD with a fire extinguisher.... then I reread the post.

Oh, you said propane or butane... not oxy acetylene!

Freudian slip???

Like this:

[pestie]

"Oh em eff gee-zors double-you tee eff!"

Yeah, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

Re:Like this:

[Ne-fishy]

Or "Oh my fucking god-zors what the fuck", for some.

Re:Brasso works great.

[SynapseLapse]

I concur. Brasso works far better than anything else I've ever tried. As long as the aluminum layer isn't scratched, Brasso will fix damn near any scratch. If the scratch is a particularly deep gouge, you can also boil the cd for about 60s to soften the plastic.

Next thing you know

[ch-chuck]

He'll be getting a nasty-gram from the lawyers of the Hair Institute Association of America (HIAA) warning against unlicensend use of a copyrighted hair care formula.

Will this work with HD-DVD/Blueray?

[ultrafunkula]

Does anybody have experience with scratches on the newer media formats? I know that the data is stored more densely - does this mean that a badly placed scratch could be even more devestating? I've had CD and DVD backups ruined by scratches (a lot of these problems are because of cheap media) - but when you're looking at losing tens of GBs on a single disc that could be ruined by a bad scratch...

Re:Will this work with HD-DVD/Blueray?

[ultramrw21]

logically a minor scratch on a next gen format will mean more comprimised data. just another reason to say NO to hd-dvd and blu-ray, as if we didnt already know enough to stay away from them.

I don't get it either

[pestie]

I've never been able to figure out how people manage to scratch a disc so badly that it causes read errors. I've been using CD's as long as anyone and I have yet to screw one up badly enough to notice. The only thing I can think of is maybe these people have, or are, children. That's one of the best arguments for fair-use copying of a DVD you already own, too - your 4-year-old kid wants to watch the latest Disney monstrosity 871 times a day and you just know one day your kid's going to decide to "make toast" and use the DVD in lieu of a slice of bread...

Re:I don't get it either

[majortom1981]

Some cds have the data laid out wierd. I have a giants citizen kabuto game that is trashed because a tiny small barely noticable scratch that isnt even deep got on the cds Also The Sims 2 cds if you get even the smallest scratch it trashes the cd.

Re:I don't get it either

[joto]

I've never been able to figure out how people manage to scratch a disc so badly that it causes read errors. I've been using CD's as long as anyone and I have yet to screw one up badly enough to notice.

Wow, your life must be exciting.

The only thing I can think of is maybe these people have, or are, children.

Other possible explanations is that they (a) have parties (b) bring CDs to parties (c) uses a portable CD-player and carries CDs in sleeves instead of the original covers (d) have damaged the original covers but continue to use them (e) are slightly clumsy (f) etc...

I have plenty of stuff. It all breaks, usually sooner than expected. My cell-phone must be replaced every year (including this year, and it was a Nokia 5140). My last washing machine broke after just 3 years, and I'm single. I've yet to keep a pair of sunglasses more than 2 weeks (and it's not because I sit on them). And I've never felt a reason to trust CDs or DVDs with valuable data either (even if they never leave the house). In short: things break all the time. It's not that it's impossible to take proper care for things, but usually cheap modern consumer items are designed to break, and unless you take a lot of care to avoid it, it will happen.

You can choose to use things that are designed better (and cost more), or you can live with the losses. Or you can go around being careful all the time, but that's not my idea of having fun...

Candle wax works too

[tylernt]

One day I couldn't get my scratched Windows install CD to work. Grabbed a white candle, rubbed it on the disc, then buffed it out with a cloth. You could still see the big scratches, but the disc worked fine after that.

Re:Candle wax works too

[B11]

One day I couldn't get my scratched Windows install CD to work. Grabbed a white candle, rubbed it on the disc, then buffed it out with a cloth. You could still see the big scratches, but the disc worked fine after that.

As well as one could ever expect a windows cd to ever work, I'd imangine

Re:Candle wax works too

[zerocool^]

As well as one could ever expect a windows cd to ever work, I'd imangine.

I heard if you play a windows CD backwards, you hear Satanic music.

That's not the half of it though; if you play it forward, it installs Windows!

~Wx

Screw that...

[convertxiii]

I never broke out hair gel or olive oil to clean my CDs...Instead one day when I was about 8 I spit on a scratched disc and wiped it off with my shirt (lint free cloth...screw that). It worked fine and took me all of 6 seconds.

Waxy substances and heat

[AviLazar]

Yea, but all those solutions are based on waxy substances. My PS2, DVD player (x2), CD player, etc all get hot after a while. Won't that melt the waxy subtance, which will then get on the inside of your media player?

Brasso

[Bluesman]

Find it in the hardware store or Target.

Use a cloth, apply Brasso in a circular motion, let dry. Wipe Brasso off with same cloth, using a decent amount of force. Brasso is a really good mildly abrasive polishing compound, and enough applications will erase any scratch.

Cleaned my whole CD collection this way.

Re:Brasso

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, if you are a moron. You should never clean your CDs using a circular motion. You should go straight from the inside to the outside edge.

Re:Brasso

[Anonymous Coward]

Out of curiosity, what is "Brasso"?

Re:Brasso

[petermgreen]

its a well known (at least here in the uk) brand of metal polish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasso

Re:Brasso

[solitas]

I haven't used Brasso - I use aluminum oxide powder, with a little surfactant (i.e. Dawn detergent) in water - but I can suggest a slightly different method: use a plastic bag.

I lay a clean terrycloth (short nap) towel on a flat surface (formica countertop) - large enough to gove you room to swirl the disc around. Saturate the towel with the solution. Use a couple of pieces of double-sided tape to secure the HUB of the disc to the center of one side of the plastic bag (I've used partially inflated 'zipper' bags as well as the 'airbags' now used as dunnage; as long as they're big enough), laser-side out, and a piece on the back for your palm/fingers.

Pressing the bag down on the towel even distributes the load all across the disc - so that you're not polishing dents/hollows into the surface - and the tape is sufficient in 'shear mode' to keep hand to bag and disc to bag.

Things polish very quickly and evenly. I'll have to try Brasso

Re:Do you know how I know you're gay?

[orielbean]

Do you know how I know YOU'RE gay?

Cuz you do dudes...

It's from The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

See also

[d_54321]

Today's "How To" of the Day

There are plastic polish compounds available

[Rob the Bold]

Just google for "plastic polish" or "acrylic polish" and pick one with your favorite color of bottle. Most are available in various grits, from clean to polish to obliterate, so start off gently.

Then, since you "own" a "license" to the disks that are already scratched all the way through, download both tracks that you really like and burn 'em on a new cd.

And that acrylic polish will also clean up your non-sahpire watch crystal.

Hint

[The Cisco Kid]

I would hope, that anyone who had to polish, melt, or wax a CD in order to be able to read it, would have the sense to *immediately read the entire disc and make a new copy onto a new, undamaged disc*, but some of the comments seem to suggest people are doing this and then continuing to rely on the repaied CD.

The repair just isnt gonna last - if you had to resort to such measures once becuase you didn't have a backup, surely you've learned your lesson, right?

Re:Hint

[Khyber]

Yanno, some people don't own computers to make backup copies of stuff - instead they only have consoles and simply buying a replacement CD or mod chip to play a copied disc just isn't in their budget.

Re:Hint

[The Cisco Kid]

Whatever. My point was just that such a 'repaired' disc isn't going to last long, and is best used as a means of being able to read it to make a backup. If for whatever absurd reason one isnt able to do that, then one should not count on the continued ability to use that disc.

Conincidental "How To"

[rkowen]

Coincidentally there's a recent "How To" on how to fix a scratched CD
at http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD
The nearly last ditch effort is to use vaseline (a lot like hair gel).
However, it's not a long lasting solution. Just long enough to burn a new CD.

Re:Conincidental "How To"

[bughunter]

I would NOT recommend using vaseline in any disc player you value, and particularly not in one that runs warm...

Vaseline (aka White Petrolatum) liquifies at just about 100F (see its MSDS), so any player that runs warm to the touch will cause the vaseline to liquify. The centrifugal effect of the spinning disk will then coat the inside of your CD/DVD tray with wank lube.

Of course, chances are that rental DVD you're attempting to view already has traces of petrolatum on it anyway.

Lol

[majortom1981]

I all I do is use the cd repair machine a wrok. Not one of those disc docotr things but one of thos $1000 dolalr ones. It works miracles

/.ed

[kbox]

I hope his next experiment is to find a fix for a slashdotted server..

Rain-X

[mOdQuArK!]

This doesn't handle the big deep scratches, of course, but it seemed to do pretty well for me at fixing scuff marks & small scratches.

Actually, the _worst_ thing I've ever done to one of my CDs was try and "fix" it using one of those "scratch-fixing" kits from the Video store - the stupid kit destroyed the surface of the disc so badly I thought I'd never be able to use it again.

quality

[Groovel76]

When I worked there, back in 2001, the thing that was severely slipping was the paint job. My supervisors were messing with the paint mixtures trying to get it to dry quicker and applying the next coat of paint before the previous coat dried which made the paint fragile resulting in more frequent burns (sanding through the paint down to the bare wood). My supervisors were also letting these burns pass through and allow the guitar to be sold which is why I left. I was told not long after I left that these two jokers were fired when Paul Reed Smith and Dupont (their paint supplier) got wind of this. If anything else has gone downhill quality-wise since then, I don't know much about it but in my opinion they are slowly becoming another fender. In my opinion, if you want a high end guitar, go to a custom shop like Fodera (semi biased suggestion since I just purchased a bass from them). They are known for their basses but they do make guitars (though not advertised on the website because of the high demand for basses) and love to make them. There are other custom shops and I'm sure their prices are the same price as a PRS but you'll get that custom fit that comes with going with the small business who hasn't given in to mass production. Again just my opinion.

Re:quality

[hobo sapiens]

I was wondering if my money would be better spent at smaller mom-n-pop type place. I will google Fodera (wonder how many references I will find to Fedora?). At least I will more seriously consider a custom shop, since you kind of confirmed my suspicion. Thank you for the insight!

A friend recently bought a custom archtop, and the quality there is just superb (offhand, don't remember the name of the luthier). Of course, that was a lot more than $3k.

This same friend worked at St Louis music, who makes Crate, Ampeg, etc. He said there are some really talented engineers there, it's just that marketing wants an amp with 100 effects and bells and whistles but the price needs to be cheap. Obviously that's just the problem with large companies, they have to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Thanks again for the reply.

Re:quality

[P3NIS_CLEAVER]

save your money and get a music man

heh

[Nass]

This is silly. Everone KNOWS that the answer to scratched CDs is nosewax.

Plastic Polish

[LaRoach]

Run to your local autoparts store, look in the car wax section for Meguiars Plastic Polish. Works like a charm.

You can't scratch light!

[Lyttek]

You can't scratch light! If you can do that, fixing a scratched CD should pose no problem to your omnipotence!

T-Cut

[Derblet]

Someone's already mentioned good ole Brasso (delicious), but I've used T-Cut and Color-Bak with good results on even deep scratches.

Toothpaste works!

[karupa]

ive never tried all these, but toothpaste works for sure! ive recovered around 4 cd's that way.

Missed some

[Anonymous Coward]

Missed some.

3. You're not on a dial up Internet connection.
4. You not using a small HDD.

Watch your language, young man

[Anonymous Coward]

I can order it for you and it'll be here in two weeks.

Toothpaste worked well for me.

[pjp6259]

Wife and I were watching _Prozac Nation_ last night, when about half way through it became unwatchable. We called the grocery store we had rented at, but that was their only copy. Next we tried two blockbusters nearby, but neither carried it. Since it was our last resort, I decided to try the toothpaste trick.

What I did was apply a small glob of toothpaste, and just enough water to make it workable. Then using a clean cloth I polished the disk with the paste moving in small circular motions. I had tried this half-assed before, and not gotten good results, so I decided to really go for it this time. I think I applied paste 3 times, and each time rubbed for about 2-3 minutes, before rinsing off. Finally I rinsed well, cleaned with a cloth, and then did one final rinse and wipe.

At the end of this you could tell that the scratches didn't look as deep as when I had started. We put it back in the DVD player, and the movie played 100% perfect, no problems at all. I was amazed.

I think maybe a solution that also incorporated something to fill in the scratches might be even better. Has anyone used any of those special purpose scratch repair solutions that they sell at gaming and office supply stores?

Re:Toothpaste worked well for me.

[Khyber]

Yanno, I've enjoyed this thread so much I just purposely damaged my Sevendust CD to test this out. since I had it in the garage.

You know that scratch/color blender product they make to paintlessly cover-up scratches and stuff in your car paint? I just tried that - that works 20x better than my normal Turtle Wax method, and it's a far faster process. Of course, I just ruined my Sevendust Disc, but I've got a backup copy anyways - save the original to tell the **AA to kiss my ass if they try to bust me for d/l any song on that disc.

Buffing Machine

[ACQ]

I've restored discs from "skipped across the street" condition to like new, barring a few very deep scratches.

I use two jewelery buffing wheels on a grinding machine motor. One wheel is slightly abrasive and the other is for polishing. I start with some rouge on the abrasive wheel and work the disc (CDs and DVDs) slowly around and around applying minor pressure. The speed of the wheel far offsets my with-the-grain motion.

Then I move to the polishing wheel. I apply a different rouge to it and do the same I did with the abrasive wheel.

When I've removed the scratches I work a cotton cloth against the grain with a lot of pressure. Once all the rouge is cleaned off the disc is 99% like new again. No joke.

I can't tell you how many times I've received an unplayable DVD from Netflix that I sent back fully playable again. They should be paying me to fix their broken shit.

what about?

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a great idea. What about those high speed drives? Will the goo spin out of the scratch. Does this work on scratches that are not 90 degrees to the tracks?

What brand did he use?

[Fusione]

What an awful article, it doesn't even mention the brand that he used. Anyone who has used different hairgels will know that they can vary a LOT. Some are oily, some cheap ones produce white flakes, some are smelly, some work well, and others do next to nothing. I find it very odd that he doesn't even mention the brand he used! It makes his whole article useless.

Saying "Just use hairgel!" is like saying "The secret treasure is hidden in.. AUSTRALIA!"

What a suspense..

[palad1]

Oh boy, I can't wait to read the slashback on this article...

This is SlashDot!

[PockyFreak]

Use a Dremel you Insensitive clod!

Brasso

[WCVanHorne]

I have polished many library CDs (if you want to test your method just take some of these babies out of the library and you can see what abuse really means) with brasso and it works great. I have never tried any of the filling methods. This is what I do:

-Shake the Brasso well.
-Wet the tip of a soft cloth with some.
-Place the CD on a hard, smooth, flat surface (bottom up of course).
-Tackle any deep, circumferential scratches first with a hard polish along the scratch.
-If the CD is bad all over do swirls/orbital polishing all around. Hard at first and then softer.
-Let it dry.
-With clean areas of the the cloth progressively buff around the CD in light swirls.
-Finish off with some radial buffing.
-Clean with some IPA if required (a good first step if the is just oily crud on it).
-Enjoy.

The method to try first

[Sycraft-fu]

Make a copy of the CD. No, seriously, burn a copy. I've found that works amazingly well. I'm not 100% sure why, but my guess is that the burner makes a better attempt at reading the data when in rip mode, and when it's written to a new disc, all the error correction is calculated, not copied, and thus done right.

Either way I've had discs that refuse to read and I'll take them, and make a copy, and they copy will work without error. It can take a good bit of time for the disc to read, but it seems to work pretty well. I always try that first, before moving on to modifying the original disc since that always carriws the possiblity of destroying the disc.

Re:The method to try first

[drinkypoo]

when it's written to a new disc, all the error correction is calculated, not copied, and thus done right.

I'm confused, you mean, as opposed to the original copy from the plates? Because otherwise, almost every CD/DVD burner is only able to write out the ECC this way. The firmware doesn't ask for the ECC, and the drive always generates it while burning.

Re:The method to try first

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends on the level of the ECC, but you are correct for the lowest level stuff. What I mean is that drives don't do pure image copies, they don't read a one, write a one. They read in the data and when it's written back the ECC is fully reconstructed.

Another way...

[AugustZephyr]

Hair gel? WTF, mate? I dont use crazy oily products on my head. Here is a wikiHow on cleaning CDs: http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD

Rain-X

[ygthb]

Works on CD's DVD's, etc...

Keep a bottle under the sink, morks even on agressive scratches (that havent breached the foil layer)

Smells nasty, but apply, dry, buff, play.

Cant tell you how many times this has worked on Netflix DVD's

ART

Vaseline

[TheStonepedo]

Rubbing in then buffing out vaseline does a great job. Plain petroleum jelly based chap-stick does well also, and for a bonus you can used flavored chap-stick to leave your discs smelling funky.

maybe....

[Mykid8yours]

Well if a thin layer of plastic works, why wouldn't saran wrap work?

Eureka!

[TheIndifferentiate]

Toe jam wasn't helping my CD's at all! Thanks for your tip!

Hair Gel vs. Commercial products

[Sigma 7]

The article mentions using hair gel as a working solution. The main issue here is that there's no information about the kind of hair-gel being used. A quick search on Google Images shows hair gels from different manufacturers. If it turns out that you need to use a specific hair gel, then you've probably messed up your CD.

It's better to use commercial products to remove scratches as opposed to plopping random substances on your disk. If you need to use the commercial product more than once for a given CD, either you need to take better care of it, or you need to make a backup.

Audio loss vs data loss in scratches

[Alien54]

Actually, Data CD's do employ error correction codes, it's far more robust than for audio CD's.

However, in audio, errors may produce distortion. If the distortion is mild and not particularly long lasting or extensive, then you can blow it off. Similar distortion in a document may leave a sentence or a paragraph, say, of scrambled text.

Such distortion in an executable is going to have far more tragic results. Binary data is much more fragile in this regard. What are the odds of the error occuring only in a section filled with comments? Never mind if it is compiled....

Re:Audio loss vs data loss in scratches

[Firethorn]

However, in audio, errors may produce distortion. If the distortion is mild and not particularly long lasting or extensive

Besides the relativly weak ec code that's present even for audio, the standard calls for interpolation that helps keep the distortion down.

Similar distortion in a document may leave a sentence or a paragraph, say, of scrambled text.

Such distortion in an executable is going to have far more tragic results. Binary data is much more fragile in this regard. What are the odds of the error occuring only in a section filled with comments? Never mind if it is compiled....

Very true, though having a few bytes off can also have extensive effects in more binary files than just executables. Database, filesystems, and compressed files are all more sensative to corruption than a simple text file. Heck, microsoft office documents are as well, as they have complex codings to keep track of all the formatting. The wrong error in the wrong spot and it could crash the whole system.

Re:Audio loss vs data loss in scratches

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the odds of the error occuring only in a section filled with comments?

Just as a note to the reader- comments are not compiled into executables.

Re:Audio loss vs data loss in scratches

[Alien54]

note that I said "never mind if it is compiled". Thus allowing for the difference between a perl script, etc. and a compiled binary.

Re:I saw the actual site for those who missed it..

[Lord Ender]

That said, how is this any better than the scratched disk in the first place? Sure it might play once

Ding ding! You win! Data that can be read once is better than data that can not be read.

Still seem silly to you? Try "man dd".

For those in the know....

[Khyber]

Take a lesson from the cleaning industry - Pledge is NOT a good solution for CDs due to the residue that's leftover and begins to cloud on the CD's surface. If you want to repair scratches, you're far better off using good old Turtle Wax. Two good coats will repair most surface scratches and it doesn't require nearly as many re-applications as pledge would, plus it's lots cheaper on your budget than buying a bunch of pledge, since a little wax goes a loooong way.

Okay, for those that don't know ...

[DikSeaCup]

IT was not unlike one of the lines in:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Re ference/ManPages/man2/reboot.2.html

In short, I think it was the "-n" option that said simply, "use only if disk or processor is on fire" and provided no details about what the option actually did (IE, did not sync disks before rebooting).

Forget scratches, what about general scuffing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can fix a scratch. When the entire surface is scuffed up though... :(

Darkening Scratches

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking if that worked, does anyone remember playstation 1 cd's were all black, and had a very high tollerance for scratces.

Pommade?!

[Verminator]

"I don't want Pommade. I'm a Dapper Dan man!"

What About Cracked Discs?

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I have a DVD that I managed to crack while trying in vain to get the case to relinquish its death-grip on the disc. The disc has a small crack that runs from the outer edge to the center, but the label is still intact. I've attempted to line everything back up and put tape on the label-side, but that didn't seem to work. Should I just try filling in the crack on the other side? I'm just trying to get something to read the disc so that I can rip it and burn to a new DVD-R.

Re:What About Cracked Discs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be VERY careful! A disc with a full length crack like that can fly apart in the drive sending bit of plastic everywhere. Perhaps a full circular label will do the trick (and help keep the disc in one piece).

Re:What About Cracked Discs?

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Fortunately as far as I can tell, the label is intact. Thanks for the safety reminder, I'm aware of that issue, typically wear goggles and stay far away from the player. I just need to read the damn thing _once_...

Re:Brasso -- NOT AROUND THE DISK!!!!

[daniel422]

Uh, this will work, but PLEASE don't wipe in a circular motion AROUND the disk! You CAN move in a (more or less) circular motion from the inside to the outside (or vice-versa, but it's really just back and forth -- or even just one direction is best) -- but mostly maintaining so that the abrasions caused by your polishing action are accross the disk -- not circular in line with the data. Remember CDs have data wrapped spirally like a record. Polishing across the data minimizes the amount that may be obscured by scratches and allows the error correction to work better.
The commercial CD/DVD doctor products work in this way also -- with a spinning vertical abrasive disk polishing a horizontal surface. As the surface rotates, so does the polishing wheel perpenticular to it -- thus all polishing occurs in one direction accross the data (perpendicular to data). These things actually work pretty well -- and can be quick if you modify your power drill to drive it!

Now for the top...

[meburke]

I've managed to recover most data on CD's/DVD's damaged on the bottom, but I have a few that have top reflective layer damage, and I haven't found a way to recover those yet. The most annoying are the Memorex with the flaking foil and the Verbatim with the scratched white surface.

This is not a conclusive test.

[RomulusNR]

In each test, the scratch was radial, made by dragging a pair of scissors from the center to the edge. Of course, this sort of scratch probably accounts for less than half of all unintentional CD scratches in practice.

He was able to make it deep enough to trigger a failure in his test equipment, but radial scratches are probably the simplest flaws to correct for.

Try pulling that Sharpie trick on a scratch that is more with-the-track than one that is orthogonal to it. It works on a radial scratch because it's such a relatively short blip on the track read.

Ok, this may be gross but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was able to use the oil from my nose to "repair" some damaged cd's long enough to copy them or rip MP3's from them. As long as the damage is to the cd is on the play side and not the metal/dye side this has always worked for me.

How about prescription glasses

[phorm]

My glasses have scratches on both lenses near the apex of the curve... which of course happens to be right where my eyes are. They're still usable, but there's a definate blurriness to them. I'm guessing that this is from using them with eye-protective goggles and having the two rub together.

According to the people at the glasses store, there isn't a real way to fix them up, but if it works for CD's.... perhaps there's a way to at least make my prescription eyeware more useful again?
Luckily, I only need the things at night when driving, or when playing airsoft in dim light (which is of course where my extra protection happily scratched them in the first place), but it would sure be nice to fix them up rather than getting a new pair....

Link to site

[ljjewell]

Suprise Suprise the site went down from too much traffic. Google's cache of the site: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:gAsRRVo3HUcJ: www.om3ga.co.uk/+www.om3ga.co.uk+google&hl=en&gl=u s&ct=clnk&cd=7 Enjoy

smelling my own farts

[Anonymous Coward]

My single piece of advice for guitar buying is - take your time and use your ears. Every single last guitar is different - every guitar player is different. Which guitar takes what you're doing to the next level?

I've heard whiteout

[thegnu]

Don't hold me accountable for your sins, however. I can attest to the fact that whiteout will plug up pinholes in a pot, AND withstand heat and water for months on end, discovered while traveling when I was 9.

11 types of people

[DennisInDallas]

the third one would be those that think they can but really can't

Re:11 types of people

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent self-ironic joke, unless of course you're not joking. Then it's an even better joke.

Easy fix for scratched CDs

[Shadyman]

Clone them to a hard disk instead, or use a 100-CD USB CD-rack for storage

So your customers are getting...

[hackwrench]

So your customers are getting a dose of dissolved latex glove with their pulled pork... Somehow I don't like the sound of that.

Re:So your customers are getting...

[LouisZepher]

Neither do I, but that's how things can be sometimes. Incidentally, if you ever go to a Sonny's restaurant, don't eat the bbq beans. I can't say why, corporate recipe crap and stuff... Also, at Wendy's restaurants, avoid the chili and taco meat (if they still have a super-salad-bar). The chili, when I worked at a Wendy's almost ten years ago was made from three types of burgers. A) "Imperfect" burgers (broken when flipped) B) Burnt or stale burgers and C) "Five-second burgers". Ugh...

Re:So your customers are getting...

[WilliamSChips]

Wasn't the chili the stuff that had the finger in it that one time?

Re:Brasso -- NOT AROUND THE DISK!!!!

[Bluesman]

Thanks, I should have been more clear. Small circles. Your arm would fall off if you tried to use large circles anyway.

For those of you having conniptions from the "circular motion" statement, let me be clear that Brasso is a (mostly) liquid, and does not introduce any new scratches on the surface of the CD.

Re:Brasso -- NOT AROUND THE DISK!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The SIZE of the circles doesn't matter. The FORM of the cleaner doesn't matter. YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER CLEAN A CD VIA CIRCULAR MOTIONS!!! Wipe STRAIGHT from the inside to the outside!! Otherwise, you will ruin your CDs. Why is that so fuckin' hard to understand? A CD is better designed to handle scratches, blenishes, etc. that go radially outward than those that go across or around the CD.

To polish out scratches...Wright's Silver Creme

[unitron]

To polish out scratches (rather than 'fill them in'), I've found that Wright's Silver Creme, a silverware polish, works well. Use the enclosed sponge to apply.

Just remember, as with any treatment, rub straight out from the center, at a right angle to the tracks, and never around the disc in a circular motion.

Is He Gay??!!

[Dilber]

Kings of Leon! All those hair and grooming products! My gaydar is hurting my ears! Dilber

Abrasive Trick

[Anonymous Coward]

After failing to adhere to the BIG RED F***ING STICKER stuck over the drive bay of my 360 when I got it, I gently moved the xbox over a few inches, my brand spanking new oblivion cd span off center and left a nice giant scratch ring all the way around it rendering it useless & unplayable (that shows me, at least a mate when he got his 360 a couple of months later, after giving him repeated warnings, and also seeing the sticker, did the exact same thing - its far far easier then we both thought to do it).

I did not use any of the above solutions, insted I used my tshirt, rubbing in a small circular motion over the scrach for about 90 minutes, there is still a scratch there, but insted of the whole plastic burs and a scratch I can feel with my finger, the scratch is now kinda visible, totally invisible at an angle and plays happily.. I guess its the same as using a buffing the scratch out, and the most important thing is that it works!

RAIN-X

[visualight]

It works perfectly for the same reason it works on your windshield. Don't have it? BabyOil.

BabyOil works really good on your windshield too, if you don't have rainx.

Oh, and if you put a light coat on your tile after cleaning, you won't get soap scum in your shower.

Nose Grease

[Mantrid42]

Nose grease works. There is a Darwinistic reason why nerds have oily skin, and thats because it allows us to fix cds on the fly.

Rain-X

[EricTheO]

Rain-X worked for the fine scratches on my eyeglasses. It also repels dust and water an added benefit. I'm not sure how well it would work on a CD/DVD, but it may be worth a try. Lucky for my I'm a stickler about how I handle my CD/DVD's and they rarely get smudges or scratches. Now, if I could only train myself to handle my eyeglasses as carefill as my CD/DVD's....

who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Jessica Simpson finally has a slip!

http://img154.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=87743_2 2757_jessicanip_332lo.jpg