removing nicks/scratches from CDs

[Steve Swann]

If the problem is a scratch, then rubbing the scratched section with a
little bit of toothpaste in a circular motion will often smooth it out
enough to make it readable again.  (Toothpaste because it's an
extremely mild abrasive.)

Steve

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Jonathan Clark <jonathan at att.net> wrote:
> Ib <ibeus at YAHOO.CO.UK> writes:
>
>> My Disc 1 has got a tiny, tiny mark on it that never used to throw my CD
>> player but now I'm finding that the track "EPCI" is skipping/jumping and
>> will no longer play properly. I've tried using Exact Audio Copy in an
>> attempt to get a copy of the track onto the PC so I can burn myself a
>> CDR so I can at least play the track in its entirety again but to no
>> avail, EAC won't read the data at that point.
>
> If EAC won't read it then no other copy program will either.
>
> I can suggest two options. One is just to try another PC with a different CD
> drive (preferably a DVD or SACD drive) and see if that can read it.
> Alternatively, invest in a CD cleaner/polisher kit, probably cost you
> GBP5-10.
> This is the one I use:
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/CLINIC-Cleaning-Restore-CD-RW-CD-ROM/dp/B0024GPRQA
> It should have a little spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol, and a device to
> hold a CD and whirl some polishing disks over it. You spray a little bit of
> the alcohol onto the live side of the CD, polish it for 10 seconds, wait for
> it to dry, and it should read just fine.
>
> Turns out almost all nicks and scratches on a CD/DVD are in the layer of
> lacquer
> which is on the surface of the disk, and do not penetrate down to the actual
> pressing itself. The nick disrupts the laser beam enough that it can't get a
> good
> reflection off the pressing. The alcohol dissolves a little bit of the
> lacquer and
> allows the polishing disks to smooth out the surface again. Once it's nice
> and flat
> (well, flatter), the laser can get a good signal off the pressing layer.
> Very
> occasionally you might have to polish a CD twice.
>
> Mary asked what EAC was. EAC (it stands for Exact Audio Copy) is a really
> useful
> piece of freeware which lets you read CDs without errors. It uses a variety
> of
> techniques. For example, it actually pays attention to any error codes which
> the
> CD drive might send back when it hits a bad area, then it will try to
> re-read that
> track a few times, if it still gets errors then it will read the area in
> "raw data"
> mode "many" times (I think it's up to 64 times) and try and piece the real
> data
> together from what it gets back. It also knows a lot about individual drives
> and
> can compensate for some of the known weaknesses in some of these.
>
> All in all, it's a must if you're doing any serious ripping. You can get it
> from
> http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
>
> Jonathan
>