About Cleaning CDs

CDs and DVDs have improved on the clarity and picture of music and movies a lot more than their predecessors, the cassette and VHS, but if you own a scratched up CD or DVD, the media could be rendered useless. Fortunately there are methods you can take to help clean your CDs so they are playable again. Different methods help in different circumstances and there are methods you can do before and after the CD gets scratched.

Features

One of the most common ways to clean a CD is by using a CD cleaning kit. The kit features a base for your CD to lie down in and some specialized cleaning gel and cloths that will help remove small scratches and dust from the CD. For deeper scratches, people can purchase the CD Skip Doctor, a mechanism that actually helps pull out the deep scratches and restores the CD to almost new. A couple of homemade cleaning techniques have helped as well.

Function

There are two ways that you can clean your CDs from home without using a CD cleaning kit. The first way gets off some fingerprints and little scratches, and the second method helps with deeper scratches.
First, for little scratches and fingerprints, spray Windex on a paper towel two to three times. Gently wipe away the areas and let the CD dry before playing it again.
The second method requires toothpaste and a soft wash cloth. Add a thin layer of toothpaste across the whole bottom of the disc. Let the toothpaste dry for about five minutes. Use warm water to gently rinse the toothpaste off. From the center of the disc, take a wash cloth and go straight out to each side to clean the remaining toothpaste off. Make sure that you do not clean in a circular pattern because this could actually damage the disc more. The toothpaste reaches deep in scratches to help clean them.

Prevention/Solution

To use your discs without worrying about scratching them, the easiest method is to actually back up the CD or DVD using a burner. It is not illegal to create a back-up copy of something that you own, so creating a back-up and using it will keep you worry free from scratches or cleaning.

Size

The size of some scratches may make them unable to clean, but CDs featuring a lot of little scratches could play just fine. Some DVDs are actually dual layer DVDs that hold 8 gigs of data instead of 4, and scratching one of these discs could be more harmful than scratching a regular disc.

Benefits

Knowing the best CD disc-cleaning methods will help you maintain your collection and potentially change the way you shop for CDs and DVDs. For example, you could buy used CDs and DVDs for much cheaper, but they may feature a few scratches. You can clean these scratches and make them act perfectly new instead of spending more money by buying a brand new disc.