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Hardware

High Volume CD/DVD Cleaning Options? 57

Posted by Cliff from the when-you'd-like-to-clean-more-than-one-at-once dept.
WasteOfAmmo asks: "I help administer a small software library where users are allowed to borrow CD's for a few days to install various software packages (yes, it is all legal, futher explanation is not necessary). Obviously as the CD's are circulated more and more they become more and more scratched, 'dirty', and abused looking. Eventuallly (sometimes after 1 use) the CD's begin to have read errors. Currently once the CD's are confirmed as 'bad' they are destoryed and replaced (re-burned). This system is costly if not in material then in time. I have been searching with little or no success for a commercial or mid to high volume (5 - 20 disks per day) system for cleaning/polishing/repairing (ie: removal of small scratches) CD's. I have read all about various cleaners (including toothpaste) and kits that can be used but in all cases the procedure is time intensive, typically targeted at low volume end users, and with dubious claims of success at best. What I am looking for a system that would work similar to a video tape rewinder: you pop the CD into it, hit a button, walk away; Sometime later you come back and presto you have a freshly cleaned CD. With all the libraries, video rental, and software 'collections' out there must be a better system then 'hand washing' each CD."
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High Volume CD/DVD Cleaning Options? More

High Volume CD/DVD Cleaning Options?

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  • Game Doctor (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chemical Serenity ( 1324 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @02:53PM (#4724836) Homepage Journal
    I found a little device in Electronics Boutique called the 'Game Doctor'. There's a manual and electronic motorized version. Requires no special parts aside from purified water to lubricate the process, and the results are nothing short of astounding. There's some CDs I had with gouges so deep I thought for sure I'd have to replace them and the Game Dr. ressurected them.

    Definately worth an investment to check out, at the very least. I haven't come across a disk it hasn't been able to save yet.
    • Found the link to the manufacturer...

      http://www.digitalinnovations.com

      Mail: sales@digitalinnovations.com

      Phone: 1-888-SMART-58

      HTH. HAND.

    • Re:Game Doctor (Score:3, Informative)

      by Apreche ( 239272 )
      Wow, you are like the first success story of the Dr. Repair series yet. I personally damage a CD-ROM once that I hadn't had a backup of. I proceeded to purchase one of the Dr. Series of repair machines. It sucked, it didn't repair the disc and it was a cheap piece of plastic/waste of money. I ended up returning it. A quick google for the device shows tons more horror stories about the device than success stories.
      I'm surprised that you haven't had trouble with it. Care to tell everyone the secret to making it not suck?

      • Re:Game Doctor (Score:4, Informative)

        by Chemical Serenity ( 1324 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @03:36PM (#4725218) Homepage Journal
        Reading the instructions helped ;)

        I think the primary cause of failures that I could see was people just not lubricating (ie: spraying on enough water to keep the thing moving smooth). If you grind on a dry or under-lubricated disk, you might as well be using #60 wet-dry sandpaper, and start saving up for your next CD/DVD.

        Hell, it even works on DVDs for me... my kids managed to completely mangle my old Matrix dvd, to the point where my player would completely barf on it about the point where neo took the pills... a little Dr. on it and it doesn't even skip any more.

        Maybe I got a good one, I dunno. ;) Hasn't failed me yet, tho!
      • Keep in mind that you *expect* a product to work, not to fail. If a product works as billed, you may be happy, but the likelyhood of posting all over the web about it isnt as great as it is if you buy something and it fails miserably. Even a fantastic product with a very low failure rate will generate more complaints than praise.
      • I too own one of the Doctor series disk polishing devices. As far as I can tell they're all basically the same. I am very happy with it, and have used it to resurrect a number of worn CDs of mine so I could rip them. They weren't all perfect when I was finished, but they were much better, good enough to rip.

        I have not tried it with and data CD-ROMs, as I tend to take better care of those.

        Following the instructions properly (about using water to lubricate the polishing wheel) and buffing the polished disk with the white abrasive pad are both critical to success.

        I wouldn't recommend it for volume work. It is manual labor, and your arm can get very tired after a few disks.

        There are commercial disk-polishing and cleaning operations. In quantity of less than 100 disks per batch they were >$3 per disk though, so it would add up.
  • I bought one of those (single disc cleaner automatic) about 15 years ago at a stereo shop. They really aren't very good, though.

  • Why not go ask your local video mega-rental store (Blockbuster, etc.) what they do?
    • netflix.com I would imagine would be pros at this sort of thing.

      otoh, at least one in 10 DVDs I get from them seems to have a media problem of one type or another.
    • Given the problems I have playing any DVDs I rent from Blockbuster, and the problems I have playing my DVDs after I rent one from Blockbuster, I seriously doubt that they clean them at all.

      Do people use these discs as skates in their driveway?

      At this point, I'm better off just buying a movie that I want to watch.

      So, here's my question: do the "lens cleaners" you see for sale everywhere actually clean anything? Or are they just a rip-off?
      • A friend's wife is the video counter manager at one of our video stores and they mostly use the glasses cleaner each rental to clean them, and a polish if they get scratch compliants.

  • plastic polish (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @02:59PM (#4724883) Homepage
    The NOVUS plastic polish works very well, for whe manual polishing is not a deterrent. It comes in three grades of coarseness (well, two grades plus a superficial polish). You can use it watching TV or while reading /. at work. It also does a great job on all the plexiglas that comes with all sorts of products and quickly ends up cloudy and ugly. It is actually OK to polish in a circular motion -- normally this is discouraged for fear of grinding debris into the disk.

    I've tried to come up with a way of home-brew mechanizing the process, such as strapping a rag to a random-orbit sander. That worked of for all but medium-deep scratches, but wasn't much faster than doing it by hand.

    And, of course, you could also threaten to penalize people for returning defective disks, which would make them more careful even if you don't enforce it (and think how nice everyone will think you are when you say, aw shucks you don't have to pay -- this time).

    • What about damage to the TOP side? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jerde ( 23294 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @04:28PM (#4725705) Journal
      I'm surprised nobody else mentioned that the Achilles' Heel of CDs are their TOP side, not the bottom.

      CDs have all the data pressed or burned on a very thin layer just beneath the surface of the TOP side of the disc. Scratch that layer, you're actually scraping bytes right off the disc, permanently.

      Scratches on the bottom side of the disc, a layer that includes almost the entire thickness of the disc, are minor by comparison.

      DVDs are much easier to fix by polishing, because the data layer is in the exact middle of the disc -- indeed even "single-sided" DVDs are two half-thickness discs glued together. Thus the data layer is shielded from both directions, and it's much harder to permanently zarch a DVD.

      - Peter
      • That's only a problem with cheap CDR's. The better CDR's have the same thickness of plastic on both sides. (That's how the cheap ones get so cheap, they skip the second half of the plastic sandwich and just slap a decal right on top of the media.)
        If you buy locally, and look really closely, you can usually see well enough into the package to avoid the crappy ones.
        Mail-order you takes your chances!
        (Or buy a brand/series you already know is good).
        • No no no! CD players are designed to focus though 1.2mm of plastic to the surface very very near the "top" side of the CD. See a diagram of CD layers [gsu.edu].

          It's DVDs that have the same thickness of plastic on both sides, as my original post said.

          It is true, though, that some CD-R manufacturers paint on a stronger anti-scratch coating, making it harder to scratch off the reflective coating.
          • It is the top side, (which the laser never passes through), that is missing in the cheap CDR's...
            The good CDR's do have a top layer of plastic under the decal forming a plastic "sandwich" around the media.
            The only way to tell is to look at the edge of the CDR. The good ones have a seam where the plastic layers are fused together. The cheap ones have no seam and it's obvious that they are slightly thinner when compared to a good one.
      • Actually, for CDs if you scratch the top lacquer layer, you're prone to scratching off the reflective aluminum layer beneath it, not the actual bits. The bits are pressed in the thick polycarbonate layer pressed on the bottom.

        CD-Rs on the other hand have non-pitted polycarbonate layers and the "pits" are burned in a chemical dye layer between the polycarbonate and reflective layer (with the top most layer being the thin lacquer).

  • Ask Google & 3 Clicks Later... (Score:5, Informative)

    by seigniory ( 89942 ) <bigfriggin&me,com> on Thursday November 21, 2002 @03:02PM (#4724906)
    http://www.vcdr.com/CD%20Machine.htm [vcdr.com]

    Valley Compact Disc Repair Inc. introduces the world's first and only fully automatic CD repair machine. The only machine available designed for performing CD repair as a business. The Disc-Go-Mech can repair up to 100 heavily damaged CD's per hour, unmanned!

  • How about some protective sheets? (Score:3, Informative)

    by MImeKillEr ( 445828 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @03:07PM (#4724956) Homepage Journal
    Check out here [butterflypacific.com.au]. I've never used them and have seen these for sale at a local store (different mfg, but same principal). Should negate the scratches alltogether.

    • These might be nice if they weren't so damn expensive (3 for $14.95 AUD). Even if you purchase 500, they still work out to $1.80 each. Much cheaper to mass-burn copies and trash them when they get scratched.

      To that end, these scratchless CDRs [scratchlessdisc.com] look promising. They have small bumps around the edges to raise the disc off whatever flat surface the careless user puts them on, to reduce the change of scratching the disc. A 40 pack is only 25 bucks. Sure, standard CDRs are cheaper, but if it reduces the number of discs you have to burn, it's probably we'll worth the extra expense.

  • Just sell the CDs. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @03:13PM (#4725000) Homepage
    If it is legal to "borrow" the CD to install on the computer, it ought to be legal to simply give them away. It would be less expensive for you, once you've considered the manpower costs of recataloging and inspecting, to simply mass-burn the CDs and give them out, and not have to deal with returns. You could also charge a nominal fee, say 25 cents, that would completely cover the costs of the discs and then some.

  • Do not actually try this... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joto ( 134244 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @03:15PM (#4725025)
    But how about a standard dishwasher connected to a large tank of cleaning fluid in a closed circuit (you can replace the cleaning fluid every few months, and add some filters at the drain to catch the worst impurities). For extra points, replace the drawers with removable CD racks, so you can simply insert a shelf of CD's at the time... Now you can probably wash tens of thousand CDs per day...
  • I help administer a small software library where users are allowed to borrow CD's for a few days to install various software packages (yes, it is all legal, futher explanation is not necessary).
    Considering your jump of the gun there, and the previous post, I agree, just burn a buttload of em and charge for the CD. Unless of course that smell permeating from this story is BS and johnnylaw will come bangin on your door, in which case, nevermind.

    • Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Informative)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      Unless of course that smell permeating from this story is BS and johnnylaw will come bangin on your door, in which case, nevermind.

      He probably works in a college library at a school that has a Microsoft Campus License. Those licenses are almost always implemented by haveing the library sign out CD copies. The school I went to had this program, and the disks got trashed all the time. We probably spend a couple of hundred dollars a semester replacing the disks.

      Anyway, I believe he's telling the truth about it being legit. What he's trying to do is probably a lost cause though. Best bet: Get a duplicating machine and make 50-100 copies of everything. Suck it up and waste a few hundred bucks on blanks.

    • Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by WasteOfAmmo ( 526018 )
      One of the replies to the parent hit it pretty close. I do work for a university and it is the MSDN Academic Alliance License that I refer to.

      It is the time involved with burning, lableling, filing, etc. replacement CD's that I am looking for a better solution for. So far burning replacements has been the way to go. I just figured with all the various legitimate reasons for circulating CD's and DVD's out there someone must have solved this problem already.

      So far as the smell mentioned goes....have you check under your desk lately :-p

      • Re:Explanation? (Score:3, Informative)

        by cybermace5 ( 446439 )
        Someone has solved the problem already.

        It's called putting the CDs on the network. With the exception of an OS that needs to boot from a CD, the installs should work fine over the network.

        That's how my school did/does it, and it worked just fine. If someone can't use the network for whatever reason, you can still check out the CD -- but 0.1% as often.
    • Considering your jump of the gun there, and the previous post, I agree, just burn a buttload of em and charge for the CD. Unless of course that smell permeating from this story is BS and johnnylaw will come bangin on your door, in which case, nevermind.
      You have to remember that many colleges, universities, and businesses have site licensing that allows them to lend out their software to students / employees for use at home or on the road, while a member of the institution.

      I'm reasonably certain that's why the poster included that little disclaimer, and I counter that it's the accusers in this thread who are "jumping the gun", in that they don't appear to be informed about various site licensing options available to large organizations.

  • Avoid the CD's altogether. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Perhaps you can make just the images available to your users on your network?

  • CD Plastic Protectors (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nerdy ( 314261 )
    I've used these [ami-proline.com] in the past to protect my cd's. you can remove them and slap on a new one when they get dirty.

  • Urine (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I find that urine, preferably the strong morning stuff, is an excellent solvent for this very purpose. Take them home and pee on them in the morning, then rinse them off - works like a charm!
  • At work we have noticed that some brands of CD-R media seem to be more resistant to damage than others. Kodak Gold, for example, has a protective coating that seems to help. Maybe you just need to use different(better) media.
    • This is something we have definitely considered and I agree that may well solve the minor scratching (on the CD's!) problem. But that will not solve dirt, greese, grit, or the smeared honey-like (I didn't taste it and I'm not sure I want to know) substance that was on some of the returned CD's.

      A semi automatic CD cleaner will solve most of the problems, better "scratch resistant" media more of them, and students that shower once in a while the rest. :-)

  • if your users are networked.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psychosis ( 2579 ) on Thursday November 21, 2002 @07:51PM (#4727555)
    (Yes, I know the submittor must have a good reason to hand out discs in physical format, but this may help.... And the subject says 'if'! :)
    CD Servers are incredibly expensive - espescially if you need something that serves up more than 10 or 20 discs. A good solution that I've seen work very well is to use a large, RAID-5'ed array (RAID-1 if you can afford the time to re-build the library from scratch) of 250-500GB and another SEPERATE disk for your favorite distro of Linux. (Other *NIXes should work, but I've not worked with them enough to be 100% sure.)
    'dd' the cd's to a .iso file each, then mount the files as filesystems with the '-o loop' option to the mount command. Now you can export the RAID directory via NFS, SAMBA, etc, and allow your users uberfast access to all that CD-based goodness. You can even enforce permissions at a lower directory level if you need to restrict access to certain groups.

    Of course if you are not networked, this is just an exercise in futility, but it sounds cool nonetheless!
  • Take some liquid dish soap (or whatever you have lying around), warm water, and rub it around a bit with your fingers, then rinse and dry. 20 cds/day would be easy.
  • I worked at the CD rental organisation in Enschede, the Netherlands for a few years. People can borrow CD's there, and also DVDs and CD-ROMs. We have a system where we keep track of the scratches and dirt on CD's. Every CD has a 'scratch card' on which the scratches are indicated using special markers with colors you can't buy in the store. In this way, the person that last borrowed the CD can be held responsible for new scratches. If the scratches are bad he/she is fined. If they destroy a CD totally they are fined for the costs of a new copy (we can bay them cheaper than normal consumers because we buy them from the import directly). This system works quite well, provided that you inform new users about it first. For more info see www.cd-uitleen.nl (all in Dutch I'm afraid).

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