Disc Repair

[Sugar Magnolia]

Does anyone have suggestions for repairing damaged discs? What methods or machines have you used that have worked well (or didn't work?)

I recently bought one of these:

http://www.aleratec.com/dvdireplpa24.html

It cleans well, although sometimes leave light circular scratches.

I've had several discs rip well that were struggling to rip prior to cleaning.

The repair and buffing has been much more of a mixed bag of tricks. I've had a little success and a lot of frustration. The buffing seems more like grinding. It really marks up the disc, but folling it with a repair seems to help a lot. (I think the buffing is meant to remove material from the disc.)

Thanks, Pete

[bhoar]

Re: Disc Repair

Hi pete,

That's what I use. For light repair, just the yellow pads with the paste. For heavy repair, a couple of runs with the pink pads (no paste), then a couple runs with the yellow pads+paste.

The pink pads do grind away, and do leave a circular mark on the disc. That's on purpose, it's grinding away material to level things out - bringing the ridge line of scratches down closer to the valley of the scratches. The yellow pads, plus the polishing compound work as an evening out and infilling material. At least, that's my theory of how the two approaches work together.

I don't use the blue cleaning pads, I can do that with a cloth myself.

The Aleratec pack seems to be the only one that comes with the pink "grinding" pads. Other brands names of the same unit (xinix? etc.) seem to only come with the yellow and blue pads. Probably because people complain about the pink pads "creating scratches", not realizing there's a method to the madness.

-brendan

[Sugar Magnolia]

Re: Disc Repair

Thanks. Will try grinding with the dry pink pads again. I'm hesitant to do this. Maybe a little more time on the yellow with compound.

I do find the blue pads and alcohol do a nice job of cleaning. Those are the default pads for me.

Between that and a few different drives I get pretty good results.

Pete