Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

LPF Donation via Stripe | LPF Donation - Other Methods

Links below open in new window

ArcticMyst Security by Avery

repairing cd's by hand!

Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
6,891
Points
83
Alright so i bough black ops the day after it was released. Anyways, i was too impatiant to copy to the game to the hardrive, so the other evening my xbox got tipped over when i tripped on a cord. The disk was spinning at the time and must have bend the disk causing it to rub.
This created a nasty scratch that traces around the entire diameter of the cd.
It was a full ring that was right in the center.

So, i went to the auto parts store and got some rubbing compound. It's used to polish metal. it looks like white grease.
It's a very mild abrasive and feels oily and a tiny gritty when rubbed between your fingers.

First off, after the scratch, my game would start up, but freeze during the intro.
trying to copy the game to the hard drive would make it freeze at 9%

So i did a quick polish. using the compound sparingly i started shining the CD like i would a boot. small circular motions, dipping my soft cloth in water to keep the compound wet.
after a few coats i washed the cd off and made it to 12% untill freeze.

i did this a few more tiem and couldn't get past 12. So i rolled up the cloth and stuck it in my mini-lathe shuck....i wanted some speed. I turn it on and applied the compound and began buffing out the cd with my lathe.

I thought i had runied it as this had created more scratches, but i found once i buffed them by hand with the compound they went away.

after the mini-lathe i managed to get the disk to go up to 45% copied and then it froze.

buffed it more and more and more.....finally got it to 82% and gave up and went to sleep.

I woke this morning and started again, buffinf it more and more by hand. all in al i spent about 4 hours buffing and polishing this CD, slowing working the scratches out and buffinf the acrylic back to a shine.
I finally got it! game copied 100% to the xbox and i saved myself $65 :D

I was skeptical but i guess it makes sense. As long as you don't scratch too deep and damage the data, they can be fixed.
lasers burn grooves into a spiral pattern on the cd. when it sees a groove or not, tells it if it's a 1 or a 0. When you scratch the protective acrylic cover, it diffracts the light and the laser cannot read the cd. By buffing out the scratches you let the laser see the grooves again.


By the way, the reason i didn't spend $2 to simply have it resurfaced at family video by a machine was that i was on duty and could not leave town........so i was stuck and i really wanted to play black ops :D

So this is one home remedy that really does work....I think the compound was around $5.....but i'll make use of it further for actually polishing metal :D
 
Last edited:





Joined
Aug 24, 2010
Messages
1,866
Points
48
Why not just go out and buy a DVD Doctor? I have one for cds and they work pretty good.
(EDIT) How is Black OPs? I haven't talked to anyone that has it.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2007
Messages
5,438
Points
83
Yeah, if it's not on the silvered side (the side with the label), you can always theoretically repair it. Silver-side? Data is gone. Also remember that if you're cleaning/rubbing it to not use circular motions, but go from the center outwards. That way whatever damage is done is confined to an extremely small region of each circumference of data, not affecting the same area multiple times which may interfere with data integrity mechanisms.

Is your XBox modded so that it'll even accept those copies? I'd have just downloaded a copy off the internet rather than deal with all those problems.
 




Top