best way to clean your discs?

Micah Cohen

Just ran out of the never-ending quarter-ounce of mystery spritz that I spritz on the disc before running it thru the cleaner.

Too cheap to rebuy a disc cleaning system just to get another quarter-ounce of this stuff.

What's the best recipe for a home-made-mix for spritzing your discs before cleaning? Any advice, caveats, suggestions welcome.

Hey, is that thunder?

MC

gdb

I prefer spit.

hearingimpared

Seriously, I exhale slowly on the disc to get a breath film then with a soft cotton cloth, rub radially from center hole to edge until I've completed the whole disc. This has worked great for me since CDs first came out and I tried all those CD cleaning gadgets and cleaners.

BottomFeeder

Yeah, what he ^^^ said. I don't even do it that "meticulously."

Micah Cohen

I have a thing that you put the disc on, disc side up, and you turn a little knob and two soft chamois sponges softly massage the disc from the inside area to the outside. Two or three quick turns and the disc is beautiful. Before I do it, I spritz it once with the little mystery spritzer.

I have had dozens of these cleaner machines in the past, and this is the one that works the best.

Since I ran out of spritzer, I've been using a solution of bottled water and a little Windex [blue] glass cleaner in the spritz bottle.

Am I hurting my discs?

MC

hearingimpared

Micah Cohen wrote: »

I have a thing that you put the disc on, disc side up, and you turn a little knob and two soft chamois sponges softly massage the disc from the inside area to the outside. Two or three quick turns and the disc is beautiful. Before I do it, I spritz it once with the little mystery spritzer.

I have had dozens of these cleaner machines in the past, and this is the one that works the best.

Since I ran out of spritzer, I've been using a solution of bottled water and a little Windex [blue] glass cleaner in the spritz bottle.

Am I hurting my discs?

MC

Is that "thing" you put the disc in a Discwasher product?

Also there seems to be conflicting opinions on using Widex on CDs;

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t195558-is-it-safe-to-use-windex-or-any-other-glass-cleaner-to-clean-ones-cds-dvds.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070127175108AAf1nbY

http://www.windowsbbs.com/hardware/16570-cleaning-cd-rs.html


Just a side note; although I know the material on the shiny side of a CD isn't the same, I use Windex (plain blue), recommended by Harry Weifeld of VPI, to clean all my delrin & acrylic surfaces on my turntable. It's supposed to do the best job of cleaning this type of plastic, which is a cousin to vinyl, and leaves no residue. I've been doing it for years and have never seen a haze form so that second link I posted above might be off BUT we're talking a completely different material on the CDs than vinyl. So unless Windex breaks down the coating it seems that you are just fine.

Whoops, I just found a link (scroll to the bottom of the webpage) where it is stated that ammonia can eat away at the surface of the CD so we're back to conflicting reports. Sorry I couldn't give you a more difinitive answer;

http://www.ehow.com/how_4843277_clean-cds-household-items.html

vc69

Warm water. Very mild soap if the disc has somehow got something sticky or gooey on it.

What are you doing to your discs to make them gooey Micah? :eek:

Micah Cohen

What are you doing to your discs to make them gooey Micah?

I didn't say they were gooey. Are your discs gooey? (I didn't do it.)

You know how you get a netflick and it's been thru the ringer? I always pop them in this simple disc cleaner thing I have, like a clam-shell that has two small moving sponges in it. I spritz it, and I turn the knob and it wish-washes back and forth on the disc for a moment or two. (Not circular motions.)

(My personal discs are usually flawlessly untouched, of course.)

So, from what I'm reading here, my tiny-bit-of-Windex plus clean water self-made cleaner might work just fine for now.

Thanks for the links!

MC

Jstas

Some ideas here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Scratched-CD

It's WikiHOW though so take it with a grain of salt.

Danny Tse

hearingimpared wrote: »

Seriously, I exhale slowly on the disc to get a breath film then with a soft cotton cloth, rub radially from center hole to edge until I've completed the whole disc. This has worked great for me since CDs first came out and I tried all those CD cleaning gadgets and cleaners.

That's the method I use. However, I have a 3M CD cleaning microfiber cloth specifically for that purpose. I made the mistake of using paper tissues and, believe me, they scratch up CDs.

gdb

here's some Maxell stuff.

http://www.pccana.com/maxell-auto-disc-repair-system-refill-p-349767.html?ref=1&currency=USD

madmax

I use warm water and soap. You could do your whole collection next time you are in the tub.

Jstas

Keiko wrote: »

Stick 'em between your cheeks, a couple spins and voila! Clean CDs.

I was trying to avoid going there but since you took a flying leap over the line I'm gonna ask. Doesn't the hair cause more scratches?