VM saved unreadable DVD!

[raymond_ho2002]

I had a data dvd that was severely abused. At some parts of the disc it looked like someone scuffed sandpaper on it. The dvd began reading at 1x read speed, which quickly dropped to 0.1X, transferring about 100kb/s for about 10 minutes. After that, it just gave up altogether and wouldn't read past this one bad sector which seemed to correspond with the scuff. I tried clearkote quikshine, which did nothing to help.



I had nothing to lose with this disc, so I aggressively worked in vanilla moose with a microfiber cloth for about 15 minutes, going from center outward. Vanilla moose removed 80% of the scratches in the dvd. The scuff was dramatically less visible; i had to look carefully for it under a halogen lamp. I stuck it back into the dvd-rom and WHOAH.. Read speed ramped up to 7x within the first few minutes and held steady with an average transfer rate of 10,000 kb/s. It didn't appear to slow down for that trouble spot that the reader initially couldn't get past.



One particular after-effect that concerns me is whether the solvents would eventually melt the plastic. This issue comes to mind because vanilla moose tends to melt whatever plastic container it's kept in. I'll write to everett and see what he says about this issue.

 

[Scottwax]

Interesting. I know Clearkote makes a CD/DVD cleaner spray, I've seen it at Blockbuster but I never thought of trying VM on a CD.

 

[carcrazy22]

Interesting tip. I will keep it in mind.

 

[dcswd]

I have one of those CD Repair things. Game Doctor, Disc Dr.... something like that. It works pretty well.



Basically you spray some water on the cd, and then you wet sand it with 2000+ grit sand paper. Its very controlled, so you cant mess it up. You could even do this a couple times and the cd would still work. So there is probably a lot of room to work with.



So, are we going to need to do this, then follow up with VM and other products to get the ultimate shine on our cds? lol







Another thought, if there are any fillers in whatever product was being used, would they fill the scratches, thus evening them out so that the lazer could read the cd correctly? I think that would be possible.

 

[a.k.a. Patrick]

Im surprised any abrasive at all would rectify such a thing....Very interesting.....Ive used QS, but never even thought of VM, great news....

 

[raymond_ho2002]

Never used VM but I use AIO and 1Z MP on rental DVD's all the time with similar results.

Hmm, that seems like it would be a good way to get rid of any potentially unsafe solvents from the vanilla moose polish. Next time i'll try following VM with AIO.



-Raymond