Posted by Adam Albright on 10/24/07 03:28

On Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:35:57 -0400, dh@. wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I like to put videos I record with my camcorder on DVD.
>That part is no problem. I use Sony DVD-R. Even though
>I'm careful with them, they still manage to get scratched
>up some, and then they freeze up and/or jump around
>to different sections of the disc.

While I was skeptical, I picked up one of those electric disc cleaners
after trying everything to read some data off one of my classic CD's I
was trying to convert to MP3. I must have played the disc hundreds of
times over the years, so it was pretty beat up. While I used Roxio to
try to grab the tracks it always hunk up and failed about 3/4 of the
way through after multiple tries.

So I was in Fry's just bumbing around and saw a Memorex Optifix Pro.
It looks like a portable DVD player. It comes with a set of
cleaning/polishing pads and some solution for each. You first put the
cleaner pads in, it spins the disc for a couple minutes then repeat
the process to polish.

Did it work? Yep, so was worth the $20 to me. I've seen several brands
of the electric disc cleaners, manual ones too in larger computer and
electronics stores. I later tried to fix another disc that wasn't
nearly as bad and that one it wouldn't help. So a crap shoot at best.
Sometimes it works, other times not.

For less severe damage you can CAREFULLY do it manually. Do NOT go in
circles that can ruin the disc beyond repair. Just a few GENTLE wipes
from the center rim out straight to edge, repeat going around the disc
work a small area at a time. They sell various cleaning solutions by
the bottle and cloths as well.

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