How to take care of your CD
How to Take Care of Your CD & DVD collection – Cleaning Your CD
Taking care of your CD collection can be a little more work than you may assume in the beginning. There are interesting stories told all of the time about such things as; dogs eating the discs, people sitting on them, kids stuffing them into the sofa, etc. There are countless things that can happen to them where ‘ life ’ gets involved. We are going to cover one of those of the basics here today.
How to Properly Clean a CD
1. This is pretty simple. You get yourself a standard CD cleaning kid with a legitimate CD cleaner and anti-static cloth. Hold the CD with the label side down, by the edges with your fingertips, touching the surface as little as possible.
2. Then, put the cleaner on the cloth, (never on the disk itself), getting the cloth moist enough to see the cleaner is clearly on the material.
3. Gently wipe from the center hole in the disc, to the outer edge. Be sure to make straight lines from edge to edge. Don’t make circles with the cloth, as that will cause microscopic scratches in the coating of the disc, causing way more damage than the fingerprint or dust you original intended to remove.
4. Turning your cloth to a dry side, keep wiping until the disc looks completely dry. Then, put it away in its cover or cdwallet.
Next, we we’ll deal with the number 1 reason people through discs away, thinking they are damaged forever, which sometimes, isn’t the case – Scratches.
How to Properly Repair/Remove Scratches on a CD
There are a number of home remedies that have worked. This one is the toothpaste method:
1. Get the previously mentioned CD Cleaner Kit of your choice.
2. Get the damaged disc and turn it over, scratched surface side up.
3. Squeeze a liberal amount of the toothpaste on the scratched CD and spread all over where the scratches are found.
4. Wash the CD off with warm water to remove the residue. Wipe it until dry with a clean, soft cloth, (preferably anti-static material). Be sure and wipe from the center hole of the disc, out to the edge, using straight-line motions. Do not rub circles, as you risk causing data loss to the cloth causing micro-scratches.
5. Clean with the CD Cleaner Kit as the final step to insure that all of the residue and your fingerprints are completely off the surface of the disk.
At this point, your CD/DVD should be ready for use. I hope you found this article helpful and look forward to sharing more information with you in the near future.