To anyone who isn't aware, this the same process used to polish and remove scratches from anything. It's the same process used to get scratches out of your car's paint. You wet sand with very fine grit paper, follow up with a compound, then a polish, then a wax. It's the same process to restore cloudy headlights. You can even buy "headlight restoration kits" and it contains 4 small pieces of very fine sandpaper to wet sand with, and some rubbing compound. This is how you remove scratches regardless of what you are removing scratches from. The reason it works is because you are smoothing out the scratches with the very find sand paper and following up with a compound that will polish those new, very fine scratches out completely. It works, trust me.
Thanks for the explanation as a lot of people thinks this is a joke. Anyway, you know what this will not work on? Stuff that you cannot sand and smooth out with sandpaper. Like rubber textured coatings.
I don't know why this video doesn't have more likes! I just fixed 5 of my cd's that my CD player wouldn't even read. They all had pretty deep scratches. I used wet/dry 1500 grit, then wet/dry 2000 grit, then I followed up with wet/dry 3000 grit, and finished it off with rubbing compound. 3 of them worked right away, no skips! The other 2 still had some skips so I repeated the process with 2000 and 3000 grit and they work perfectly! Thank you so much for posting this video!! @BeatTheBush
Cool. And thanks. I just ignore all the idiotic comments and was happy to see yours. I believed him, but reading your experience affirms I will be trying this. Do you think it's better to just go to the sand paper for more damaged disc ?
@@carlo_cali you need to see if your disc is able to repair first. If you sand and buff for too long and still see deep scratches then that will not work. And if your disc has scratches on the label side, you already damaged the data and it won’t work because the label side is actually susceptible to being damaged.
This guy did a GREAT JOB! I appreciate him explaining where the data ACTUALLY IS. It made me realize that I don't have to be so afraid of a scratch! That was interesting to find out! (Maybe I'm behind the times, but I did not know that the data is on the silver back of the front label...)
Honestly I wasn't sure to actually try the sand paper and using the buffing compound, but I thought it was worth the shot to fix a PS1 game that I love but was too scratched up from my mistreatment of the disk as a kid. I used a "sacrifice" ps1 game that was in an even worse condition. I used all the same products that was used in the video and it didn't work the first time. I tried it again on the same cd cause I might as well and the game works. I tried this on the other game cd that used to crash all the time and I worked for that game as well. Thanks man now I can go and actually finish breath of fire 4 :)
There had been a lot of skepticism on this and I really have no idea why. It just makes sense to me that's why I did it in the first place. Oh well, glad you actually tried it and didn't just say I'm lying and run. Lol.
Very informative video and so helpful!! Your voice was clear, the view & lighting were excellent - overall an A+ job with easy-to-follow & concise directions. Thank you for helping me fix a scratched DVD and save our movie night, which was turning out to be a disaster! You rock!!
Just a note about a few things to think about. A) The disc has to be as clear of scratches only enough for the laser to deflect from the cd uninterrupted or it cannot read the data. That means that wax is unlikely to be effective in the long run as the disc heats up. Some high performance drives such as blue-ray are more likely to read a disc than older dvd players. B) Flatness of the disc is a factor in laser deflection, so sanding the disc by hand can cause an unevenness which will result in poor laser deflection. Using a mechanical means such as a buffer wheel is slightly better, but even then the disc may become concave and not be read. C) Some polishing compounds are for other materials. I find that the ones that work best are for automotive paint. Compounds meant for metal or acrylics may embed themselves into the disc destroying it forever even with a professional resurfacing. D) Quality of the disc is of high importance (not just the data, the physical disc). This means that you should inspect the center for cracks or separation, chips or cracks at the edge and the scrutinize the label by holding it up to the light and looking from the non-labeled side to see any holes that light may pass though. If you can see even a small scratch or pin hole of light, this is sufficient to kill a disc (however, I have seen some small amount of scratches make little impact on a game, and only a pinhole ruin an entire song...you take your chances). I can successfully resurface 60/100 by hand. Using a consumer machine, I can successfully resurface 95/100. I suggest using the least invasive methods by hand and invest in a machine. A good machine might mean dropping a $100, but I highly recommend it if you need to resurface 20 or more discs that are important for you (that means maybe you have some family album or special edition dvd that is hard to find). I would not try to resurface heavily scratched dvds or cds by hand, it is time consuming and almost never fully works. Some fails: I once used alcohol as a cleaning agent when resurfacing a disc. It wiped the label (and data) completely off the disc. I use a green pad on a disc to remove scratches because I thought it was less abrasive than 2500 sand paper. I was wrong. I tried resurfacing a Blue-ray disc on a machine. I mistakenly used the sanding function. Keyword: "mistakenly" Experiences with slightly cracks or chipped discs: They like to explode in disc drives Discs that have been professionally resurfaced two or more times will not polish by hand may be too thin to polish even with a machine.
Thank you for a LOT of good, free advice. I just discovered that I purchased some very high dollar PS2 games (yard sale) with a lot of small scratches, I think I will purchase the machine after reading your comment.
@@medmuscle, sure. I've made some very large lot purchases on eBay and I've only resurfaced about a third of them. But I can tell you that the PS2 games I've saved were: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, Xenosaga, Shadow of the Colossus, Burnout 3: Takedown, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Jak II and SSX3. I was not able to save Bully, Psychonauts, or Final Fantasy X (yet). I'm working on building another polisher that is more accurate as I've since outgrown the one I bought. I made a prototype that polished some of the above games that were previously not loading 100% of the time and now they are. I've also saved a number of movies: Anniversary Collector's Edition Jaws, Tremors 1,2,3,4, Earth2 TV series, Hellboy, Lord of the Rings 1,3 and Star Trek on Bluray which just needed a slight cleanup as it would get stuck at the scene where his Kirk's dad died but now its working great. I was also able to repair 21 PS1 discs, 16 Xbox discs and 11 Xbox360 discs. I will say that Xbox360 discs are the hardest to polish for some reason. They seem to take a minimum of three passes in the machine even if they are not that bad. I fixed PS2 discs (Jak II and Shadow of the Colossus) which were significantly worse than any of the 360 discs with less effort. There is hope my friend and don't throw away a disc if it doesn't read or work on your first try. As you get better at using the machine, you will find that you can fix games, cds or movies you previously couldn't. Good luck!
You mentioned alcohol ruining a disc, that's interesting since I used to buy special cleaning kits for cd's and I think the liquid that came with it was nothing more than alcohol. Definitely had that smell! Maybe the alcohol you used was too high percentage? Above 70% will most likely damage plastic, maybe even a lower percentage will.
@@HA-cm3kg Yes, I had that same experience; hence, that is why I thought alcohol would be a great "go to" chemical for cleaning. I tried 50/70/90 and all types gave the same disappointing results. There must be a catalyst of some kind with the other solutions that contain alcohol but I haven't been able to figure out what it is. It's possible that it is some other chemical entirely that smells like alcohol which I just don't know about.
0:56 - What you are talking about is specifically for CD's. DVD's have an extra layer of plastic between the label and the data layer. Still good to be careful regardless, if for no other reason than to just not scratch the label itself in the case of DVD's. Oh, and thanks for this. I have some really badly scratched DVD's from garage sales and I've been trying to find a good method for buffing them. Going to see about getting some of the necessary materials when I go to the store next.
I like that he gives information about the direction of scratches and how it affects the disc and I like the information about being careful about the flip side, I was not aware. Although he does not show proof he does explain how it did not work and that it does work now.
Can't say I 've tried this method -- I will today, though -- but it seems logical. This is the same way I've fixed scratches in glass, headlights and paint over the years. Makes sense. I just wasn't sure it would work on a disc. Thanks tons for the thorough video! I wish you would have shown you playing the disc at the end :).
I would try the rubbing compound by itself first before using the sand paper because it has microscopic grains in it to cut through the imperfections on its own. You only need to wet sand if the scratches are too deep for the compound to remove alone. Like another commenter said on here this the exact same process you use to remove scratches from paint, repair headlights and other glass and basically anything that can be polished.
Did Exactly as said in the video and took my disc for Xbox one that hadn't worked no matter what for 6+ months and now boom it's working!!!! Thanks man :)
+BeatTheBush it's OK if you don't have proof I believe it works, but there's some people who will say "this all fake he does this to make people think it works blablabla." and I was just trying to concern you about that. Overall I think You did better than most could even do in their dreams but that was just something I had to put out because I couldn't handle it. Cheers!😃
Yep, there are more than a few that asks for proof of before and after. I agree it'll make it better so I'll be doing this soon. To me, when you see something done, it just make sense and no proof needed. But to some, sanding it makes more scratches so it seems more like a joke.
THIS WORKS!! I wet sanded with 2000 grit in a circular motion like you said for about 4 rotations then I used 100 pound cardstock paper and wet sanded with that for 4 rotations. I didn't have any rubbing compound so I used toothpaste (not the same) The disc came out a little cloudy but it DOES work!! DON'T BE AFRAID TO TRY THIS. Thank you Beat The Bush
This shit works better than toothpaste which I tried first (didn't work), but I used a cheapish brillo same method, then car wax/polish with leather cloth on laser burtnt mw2 game, and it actually worked, this guys idea is the one you just need to resurface in the best way possible. Good luck.
Some says it works wonders like yourself. Others think it's a scam. I wish people look at my other videos and see I do not make joke videos to trick people.
I just recently bought an Xbox game off of Ebay and it had a really deep circular scratch in it. So i decided to try this and the game worked :D It took me more than one try to do it so don't give up if you're going to try this! Thank you so much man
I almost bought a new set of P90x video, but after watching the video,. Windex, Waxing, Buffing all perfect. Thanks for the advice. Saved me $125 . Two thumbs up
I’ll never forget the time that I purchased a damaged DVD of To Have and Have Not. When I played it on my Mac laptop, the film just stopped by the “you know how to whistle” scene….and it went back to the menu.
I understand you being skeptical. So I made a video with proof here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tpcd-5fd9nY.html Before, during, and after playing an actual disc using this repair method.
My dad told me about this, it sometimes works. I had a bunch of blank dvds and spongebob dvds as a baby and I didn’t take good care of them cuz I couldn’t tell what they were. They are full of scratches and I’ll try this.
i would definitely suggest using microfiber cloths here instead of a napkin or paper towel, or regular cloth towel. This is the exact same process for correcting paint scratches on a car. CDs aren't magic people. a light reads the data from the inner portion of the disc. the plastic is just for rigidity and protection. scratches block and bend the light, making the machine unable to read the data. if the disc is crystal clear, it should work just fine.
Yep, I do a more thorough process here with proof of it working because people keep on thinking this is fake here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tpcd-5fd9nY.html
@@BeatTheBush dude you need to redo this video and delete it. it really makes you look like an unreliable source of information. @Evan Johnston - first thing i was thinking too, NAPKINS??? you know they are made from wood right? :shakes head:
Great video! May I make a suggestion? I'd wet sand the disc first (using 3 levels of grit 1500, 2000, and 2500) and then use the plastix to clear it up. Also, I find that a Microfiber cloth is great for the cleaning and polishing steps. :)
But plastix will not actually buff but just wax. It fills in the fine lines rather than micro sands it away. Yes the micro fiber cloth would work well, not sure why I left that out.
I'd try practicing this technique before you do it on something you care about. Hit a pawn shop, thrift store or garage sale and find a couple of trashed CDs there (they might sell them to you for fifty cents apiece or something; they'll probably be happy to get rid of them once they see the scratches). Doesn't matter what it is. If you like the disc, even better. When you do that, hold up both sides to a light source and make sure you don't see any little pinholes of light coming through either side. Those discs are gone; can't fix 'em. Play the CD when you get home (or put up with it) until you hear skipping. Note the time on a piece of paper. Maybe see if you can find a couple of skipping spots. Polish the disc as shown here. If you trash the disc, so what? Do another one until you get it down. By the way, some discs are too far gone to save. Just the nature of that beast.
Holy crap LOL - I used a headlight shining repair kit LOL (because you mentioned that) - I started with just the 3000 grit and lightly wet sanded it until the whole bottom of the disc was nice and cloudy (while being extra careful nothing on the top of the disc got scratched or touched) - then I washed it - dried it - then applied the compount that came with the kit with a microfiber towel - and rubbed it for a while - not hard - just lightly in a circular motion on the entire bottom - adding more compound when neeeded - did this for about 8-10 minutes until I got the whole thing nice and even - that got the thing SHINY and clear! It got even more clear once I washed off the compound and used the microfiber towel to buff it (using the part of the towel that was dry and did not come in contact with the compound). I could even read the numbers on the inside part of the disc! Plopped it in - and instead of getting errors on the game install and taking forever just to load the installer - the installer instantly loaded - ZERO errors - THANK YOU!!!!! YOU RULE!!!!!!
I’ve had a reasonable amount of success restoring Scratched CDs & DVDs, One thing I would say is that when polishing Disks I polish from inside to out or vice-versa and would never go in a circular motion as I do believe that it will cause more problems!
+Nav Randhawa Awesome. Toothpaste would seem a bit opaque but I guess when it's so thin it's clear enough for the laser to go through. It's great, less discs in the trash and less land fill.
***** I never had a need to do it yet so therefore I do not have a method yet. The top layer is much thinner in blu rays so you cannot sand it and must fill it up instead.
GTA V Play disc. I tried toothpaste, nothing. I tried deodorant stick, nothing. I tried polishing it first, nothing. Lastly, i tried sanding it with 2500 grit sand paper and then polishing it and YEEEEES, IT WORKED! Thank you very very much for this video!
You can also put the disc in your microwave for 2mins 35secs then wipe it down to smooth the scratches out or put it in the oven for 15mins on 425 degrees then take a rubber mallet and hit the disc to bang out the scratches
Worked like a charm dude!! Thank you soo much!!!!!! EXCELLENT ADVISE!!!!!!!!!!!! I can also see how this would work on foggy headlights. Thanks again!!!!!!!!!!!!
Those of you that keep on asking for proof. I made a new video destroying the disk and then fixing it with this method on camera here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tpcd-5fd9nY.html
I do something similar for my car windows. I got really annoyed when I looked through and the sun glare showed all these tiny scratches all over it. Clean window, mix with pumice soap and wax, about 1-3 ratio pumice to wax. use a buffer and done. What you did is similar but damn near spot on what body mechanics do on cars when painting.
I recently purchased Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the Dreamcast on eBay and the disk was insanely scratched up, the console's disk drive was unable to read the disk at all! I took it to a videogame store where they tried to resurface the disk with a machine but to no avail it did not work. I finally tried your method with skepticism but to my surprise it worked! The easy part was using the sandpaper thereafter you REALLY have to be patient with using the polishing compound to get rid of the haze. It took me almost two hours to finally get the disk to shine, and now it boots up every time I insert the game into the Dreamcast. Thanks! 👍 P.S. perhaps a rotary car polisher would be ideal to use to remove the haze from the disk.
The cool thing is all of this is at your Wal-mart in the auto section. Everything shown can by bought for $15 - $20 and it's all good quality product. You'll have plenty left over to do paint scratch fixes and headlight restoration. Pro method all the way. Props.
its how they make cars clear coat shiny its a water sanding process. wet sanding polished and dry sanding Scratch's anyone who painted a car or anything knows this
IVE ONLY WATCHED A LITTLE OF THIS, ENOUGH TO KNOW YOU HAVE USED WINDEX AND SOME TYPE OF WAX. I DONT HAVE ANY WINDEX TO START IT OFF BUT IT GAVE ME AN IDEA TO JUST USE DISH WASHING DETERGENT. I RUBBED IT ON MY GAME DISC WITH A TISSUE THEN WASHING IT OFF AND DRIED THE DISK AND SO FAR JUST THAT ALONE HAS MADE A BIG IMPROVEMENT. IF IT PLAYS UP AGAIN I LL GET EITHER TOOTHPASTE OF WINDEX AND TRY THAT NEXT TIME BUT SO FAR MY GAME IS WORKING MUCH BETTER. AND I WILL GIVE YOU A LIKE. MY GAME WAS MOVING VERY SLOWLY TO THE POINT WHERE IT COULD BE CLASSED AS FREEZING. THANKS.
I just fixed mine using plain old pledge, a soft t-shirt cloth in circular motions. Brought back to life the last six songs on a homemade CD for my daughter's 6th grade graduating class. She's now 29 and I thought she might like to hear music from 2007. Try simple wax furniture polish first and see if that works for you.
Chaslasher Hilliard I'd say up to about 300um because the clear layer is 600um. I know that probably doesn't help but as long as it doesn't reach the data layer and you can sand down to that level, then you can fix it. You still need to leave some material because you cannot just expose the data directly.
You can check in the video description. It's like $8 for the sand paper (I recommend to go for the higher grit of 2500+) and the rubbing compound is around $5 I think.
as you would conventional records you would Disc always hold disc by its edges when finished place it back in its place directly after play wipe disc from center to edge lightly never used cleaners it can get off track if done so always use a clean cloth thin one.follow these instructions disc can be heard as the day you bought it @2017
you are a life saver because I finally got my legend of Zelda twilight princess back from Terrance yesterday and then it wouldn't play. so i'm gonna sub to u and like this vid thanx a ton XD
and don't bring them in the car especially not in one of those books or sleeves. thats the biggest mistake people make with cd's anyway. but yeah if you take care of your discs they will last a lifetime.
Elvis is in the house man I didn't see you play it first I saw you do everything to the desk and you didn't put it after that so I don't know if that's really good for it or not but I'll try it thank you thank you very much man sincere TCB Elvis Presley mr. yes I'm still alive
Alright Elvis, lot of people complained about using the disc before and after so I remade this video with very clear proof of a good disc that I scratched until it doesn't work. Then I repaired it until it does work with this method. The video is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tpcd-5fd9nY.html
Elvis is back in the house I'm alive and well man and oh yeah you work um I'm complaining about the dish that I have the scratches are so deep I don't know Atlanta to my friend and this is how it came It had a deep scratch in it and I wanted to know how to get it out or watch the video very clearly and I was watching it again and then you came back on again so I really didn't have a chance to see it again but that's okay man I'm not going to go through right now so I'll just go buy another one because even though I had scratched it all over with sandpaper and use compound to get it out I believe it might be even more screwed up than ever so this is how an older person thanks man nothing to worry about my brother but the situation is I don't want to go through the hassle of all that sincere TCB Elvis Presley I'm alive
Elvis A P Mark Dawson Ok. They say the older you are or the richer you are the less hassle you are willing to put up with. It makes sense and I understand your threshold of how much work you have to do to achieve a certain goal is different for every person. Cheers Elvis. Til next time maybe you will come across another one of my how-to vids.
Dude, I have problems with my spore galactic adventures disc. I don´t know if its a bug or something I only know that it is incredibly scratched up. I don´t want to use sandpaper. Don't want to risk it. Do you have another useful tip? Thanks :)
I tried rubbing using cooking oil to make the scratches translucent and improved my scratched disc abit. But before trying rhe disc, make sure u wipe of the oil using soft cloth or newspaper.
I used 1000-2000-3000-5000-7000 grid and than put rubbing compound on it. Works almost like new. Depending on how deep the scratches are you can skip 1000 grid.
Once again I will judge. Useless comment. His english is excellent, who cares about a slight accent? Why bother with this comment? You've wasted my valuable typing time defending a man's accent. If this was actually a compliment then I apologize because I misunderstood you.
Well I tried it, worked wonderfully!! It worked so well, that after I buffed the disc, it broke cleanly in half, forcing me to hopefully locate, a new copy, if I can find it, at a not so exuberant price :-)
NO! This is a terrible idea! Windex is very bad for your disc. Too many chemicals, and it will probably lead to early disc rot. Water will also lead to early disc rot. Napkins and towels will scratch your disc. The way you sanded it, you couldn't have done it completely even(you'd need a machine for that) which means that the weight of the disc is now ever so slightly off balance. That could damage whatever game system or CD/DVD/Blu-ray player you're playing it on. The car wax is the only thing that *MIGHT* be okay. You should only use rubbing alcohol to clean your discs(as close to 100% as you can find), and wipe your discs with a micro-fiber cloth ONLY. DO NOT use napkins, towels, toilet paper, tissues, or a T-shirt. Even though they may seem soft enough not to scratch the disc, they WILL scratch it.
Since when does a disc rot from water or windex? Off balanced disc??? Just sand it evenly and you'll be okay. Hundred have tried this method successfully and reported their disc worked after. People will not buy a $100 machine to fix one disc.
No it will not rot the disk but the only thing you are right about is the uneven weight... I tried it with minecraft and it worked so I tried to fix my GTA V but I accidentally sanded it too much and it was too light so my xbox wouldn't spin it because it thought there was no disk to begin with... And now I just realized this one sentence could be split into at least 5 separate sentences. Lol
I do not know if he is correct....but disc rot is a real thing (and it is not the plastic rotting ....duh). Early laser disc and CD's are notorious for developing it (even a few early Blurays had problems). I think the concern is any moisture seeping into the sandwiched layers of the disc. Alot of disc rot was the result of imperfections in manufacturing, debris getting in between layers during assembly.
The general advice is to polish radially, NOT in circular motions. Deeper scratches can be treated in a sort of "crosshatch" pattern, going with a shallow diagonal motion obliquely across the scratch from one direction, then the opposite. This method works on scratches in general, and that is really all you are doing on CDs - working on the most effective sequence of polishing from the medium grit to superfine grits, up to 2000 or 3000 sandpaper, and last the fine grades of rubbing compounds. Use the materials designed for such work, as the abrasives are consistent within each grade, unlike toothpaste etc. which may have many grades of abrasives that can continue to introduce new scratches. Don't skip steps, as each one works on the previous level of roughness but will take far longer to smooth two or three coarser grades of intermediate scratches.
That is not what people mean by a circular motion. When people say to not wipe a disk in a circular motion they mean a wiping around the disc in one big circular motion because that is how a disc laser reads. It runs around the disk in a circular motion. Wiping the disk in small circles like he does in the video is fine.
I've done this basic thing before and it works although I used a few different products and perhaps a few more stages. First take the surface back with 2000 wet & dry sandpaper with water. I spent a fair bit of time sanding as the scratches were quite deep. Then I used toothpaste and water with tissues. Also spent a fair amount of time to bring the disc to the most shine I could get with toothpaste. Then I used brasso. You know that stuff that comes in a can of wadding for polishing? Did this straight with the wadding to bring it up to a shine pretty much like new. You have to use a fair amount of pressure in both the toothpaste and brasso stages for it to be effective. I do believe however that the compound product that this guy used in the video would work better than brasso and would absolutely use it if I ever needed to restore a disc again.
