CDs and Toothpaste

[D'Snowth]

As you know, since I've lost a lot of hard-drives in the past as whatnot, I tend to do A LOT of backup, so I have quite a few CD-Rs full of various files, documents, audio tracks, videos, images, etc that I may want or need for future reference.

I've noticed that my disk driver refuses to open one of my CDs, so I'm assume it's just acting up again (as it went through a phase like that a few months ago, and I don't know why), but upon further observation, I see the CD is very badly scratched, which I actually blame on the driver from its haywire days.

Now I'm reading up on tips to repair scratched CDs, and every thing I read says to use, of all things, toothpaste on the scratches with Q-tips... I'm skeptical about this, but something tells me it's so crazy it just might work, as there's a common gag on television where if something doesn't work like it should, someone else suggests applying toothpaste.

What do you guys thing?

 

[MrsPepper]

Ooh... clear gel toothpaste, or baking soda-ish white stuff? It might make a difference, but I say try it, it probably won't make it too much worse... Actually don't use the white kind, it's probably more abrasive (I'm not even supposed to use it on my mouthguard!)

 

[D'Snowth]

From what I've read, gel pastes should be avoided at all costs, which works out okay, as my toothpaste does contain baking soda.

Some have even said vaseline works just as well.

 

[GonzoLover85]

I've found if I ever have scratched things, rather than try and fix them myself.
I just go to my local video rental place.
They usually have the proper technology to fix scratched dvds/cds.. and for a small fee I'm sure they'd be willing to do it for you.

 

[D'Snowth]

and for a small fee I'm sure they'd be willing to do it for you.

Ironically, some of what I've read is one of the reasons why the toothpaste trick is recommended - to avoid having to pay professionals to do it for you.

There was an article saying that the toothpaste (especially gritty pastes) might cause new scratches during the cleaning process, but apparently the "new scratches" would be "superficial" compared to the already existing scratches.

 

[Krazedmuppet]

dont know too much about CD's BUT I do know that if you take the blue gel tooth paste and then put it on a car windown that it will eat the tint on it.... so that maybe a bad idea for CD's )or maybe a good one...)

try it on a cd you dont care about first- im sure you have plenty of what I like to call "coasters" (because a bad cd is nothing more than that lol)

 

[GonzoLover85]

If you're looking at saving some money Snowthy, check out this youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE1gvaM3iAs

He uses peanut butter, toothpaste, diet soda, and baking soda; and it looks like it works.
As krazedmuppet said, I would try it on a "cd coaster" first.

 

[D'Snowth]

Thing of it is, I don't have a CD-R that I would consider a "coaster", and this is the only one that appears to be significantly scratched - all the others are okay, and have no problems being read by the drive.

I think what I might do is wait until tomorrow... I've found back when the driver was acting up, if I waited until the next morning, after having the computer off over night, that it worked fine the next morning, so perhaps this might be the case... if not, THEN I'll give it a try with the toothpaste, and hope it works.

 

[Oscarfan]

My friend washing discs in the sink (yeah, he's an idiot), but I never heard of toothpaste.

 

[D'Snowth]

I simply Googled (my friend's going to kill me for Googling, lol) "how to treat a scratched CD", and like I said, all these sites and pages came up claiming toothpaste really worked; but I had to check with you guys first to see what you all had to say, lol.