Best way to clean a cd?

[Psyt3k]

What is the best way to clean a cd when certain tracks have become unplayable?

 

I've heard and read different opinions about this. One study says that cd's have to be stored in a dry environment, while other say that you can clean your cd with soapy water for example.

 

http://www.household-management-101.com/how-to-clean-a-cd.html

This link contains the most common tips. Where others give other advice. Who has tested different methods and has seen the results? Advice please

[Ormion]

I've tested toothpaste and banana peels and both did nothing at all.

[Psyt3k]

I've tested toothpaste and banana peels and both did nothing at all.

I tested out toothpaste (a "gritty" whitening kind) today for the first time and it helped!

EAC was trying to rip a track for 45 mins. I canceled the operation, cleaned the bigger scratch with toothpaste, rinsed it with water, dryed it, and it worked! It took only 2,5 mins for that track. But now I wonder if this could have consequences for the cd in the future, since moist/water can cause the individual layers to come loose from eachother?

[trancenonZENsedance]

Yes, using toothpaste to smoothen out scratches has worked for me before. I guess short exposure to water is not a problem, but it would be constant humidity that could cause damage.

 

I've tested toothpaste and banana peels and both did nothing at all.

 

Of course. You have to smoke the banana peels while cleaning the cd with toothpaste to get the desired effect.

[Dolmot]

The clear plastic layer on the underside is relatively thick. It's extremely unlikely that you could scrape through it by any means of cleaning. That would quite literally require sanding the whole disk into nothing. Meanwhile, the print side has the data fairly close to it but you shouldn't be doing anything to it anyway.

 

The most likely direction for oxidisation is from the edges.

 

I think I've managed to salvage one used CD with toothpaste. It had scratches on the clear side. However, problems with new CDs have always turned out to be errors in master production or pressing so there's probably nothing helpful you can do by scraping the clear side (or the print side, for that matter). I believe all my attempts on those have only resulted in the same or even more errors.

 

For valuable used CDs with visible scratches you should probably try a professional resurfacing service. They're not that expensive and you should get much better results than by DIY. Of course, that won't help either if the data layer is bad for one reason or another.