Caring for optical discs
 

I just went through my dad's entire box of CDs to rip, and about half of them were so scratched up that they had at least several tracks that would skip, even after being repaired. Many of these had been thrown into the car's center console and jostled around without care. The same is true for DVDs: those tend to rest atop the DVD player for weeks without being put into their cases.


Rather scary fact: there was a single disc that was in pristine condition; I don't think it had ever left the case until I removed it. The album was "The Immaculate Collection" by Madonna. For reference, here's a dictionary entry: "immaculate, adj.: absolutely clean, neat, and free from blemishes."


I try to take care of my own media, especially because I paid good money for it and want it to last. Once I remove an important disc from the player or drive, it goes right back into its case. Junk discs (usually burned stuff that I only need for a little while) get tossed around, though. Do you folks take care of your discs, or do they just get left around until clean-up time?

Funny how I have rarely any discs to take care of since I've went mostly digital on my laptop, and the 3DS doesn't use any actual discs.

I do have a couple of DVD+RWs around, and... well, the one I have seems to be scratched by itself. Maybe it's the MacBook Air's SuperDrive that's screwing things up. I think that's probably a design fault - where else can you get a perfectly circular scratch on a disc, every time?

It still works, but I have a feeling that I really should replace the disc.

Perfectly circular scratches are almost always a player/burner, and very frequently it's moving the player while the disc is spinning, but sometimes it's a damaged disc. I did see a few of those in here.

By the way, have you ever took out a disc, only to find that the disc already had scratches on it "new"?

Yeah. I think those are caused by the tray itself, but the shape of them never matches the tray. Odd.

Makes me wonder how well portable CD players protect against scratching the CDs.

Sometimes it also makes me wonder what's going on in the manufacturing process itself, given that some discs come scratched day one...

When I think about all the CD-Roms I have broken from when I was kid, it's just ridiculous.

Plus all the DVDs I have that are more then 10 years old don't even work.

I believe some early DVDs have problems with the materials used - disc rot.

I have only ever ruined one disc and that was Red Dead Redemption for Xbox 360. The funny thing is that I only had about 2 hours gameplay on it. I think that I broke it by lifting up the xbox while it was playing the disc, never again...

I remember a long time ago my family had a DVD player that got to the point where it would consistently scratch every DVD we put in it. The video rental store was not happy.

I accidentally did that too. >_>

This is why I often back up my discs and use the backups, putting the originals in either their own case or in a rather large CD carrying case. If the backups get scratched, toss and make another one.

I have had one succumb to disc rot before. Nowadays I'm careful to back up important things to various mediums, mainly external drives and DVDs.

I went out and bought a movie on DVD today.

Upon returning home, I opened the case, and... well, I start to wonder what's a smudge doing there. At least it's easily cleaned off with a microfiber cloth.

As a kid I was terrible with CDs, most of my Gamecube games no longer work, or get stuck loading certain areas. Fortunately I can at least work around those with Wii Homebrew, and now I take excellent care of my CD/DVDs. The same can't be said for my Wii itself though, that thing runs rings around them like crazy. Not enough that they don't work, but it's not nice to look at. You don't get that perfect shiny rainbow on the disc :3

Apparently the backs of optical media are very easy to scratch, compared to even plastic phone screens. Hmm...

At least I should be glad that one scratch can be easily dealt with by the drives. Too many of them, though, and perhaps decommissioning is better.

I always take care of my discs since I want them to last, especially video games! The only discs I'm careless with are the ones that I've burned and only need for a short time.