Saving scratched CD's?

Sometimes Toothpaste works if you rub it around the disk. But it doesnt help alot

I heard Rubbing Alcohol helps alot.

Try rubbing a banana on the scratches. I've heard that will repair the scratches :P

Uhm, try to clean the CDs with toothpaste and clean it from middle->edge. Also you can try to place it in the freezer for two hours afterwards. These are the myths I heard of.

just lol, get a program that can read the cd at 1x speed and it will work.

Depending on your local law/licence you may:

• try to use software to recover original data from disc (CDs are quite redundant but checksum correction may take some time),
• contact game distributor (warranty?)* and ask for new disc,
• check whether game's abandonware or distributed for free,
• download copy from Internet (be advised most laws forbids upload to others - this excludes torrent, ed2k, DC etc. networks) and use original key if any,
• ask distributor* for solution.

I hope it helps. Those are legal solutions.

*- distributor or manufacturer if distributor is no longer existant... or current copyright owner.

Even if you successfully make an image of the discs, I wonder if they would be properly playable.

In this case, I would contact the distributor's website, else I would download the disc from elsewhere (don't upload if you are using p2p, just download). If you do that, you are not actually pirating, you are basically re-downloading your licensed software.

Well, there are two ways you can make them work, but the first way only bears marginal results sometimes. It still managed to save me an old Prince of Persia 3D disc back in the day.

• 1) Use a program called Bad Copy; I think it's integrated within Total Commander's Ultima Prime or whatever version, you know, the big one. It can be found in one of the menus near the Programs, but not exactly in the programs menu since it's rather an add-on. What it does, is it copies the game's good parts on your hard drive, and tries and fix the bad ones. Sometimes it can't do that though, and that will leave your game damaged, but in my case with PoP 3D, it was only a cutscene that was damaged and it even played without any visible hiccups, so maybe you'll be lucky with it.

• 2) Find it on a torrent site and download it. No, seriously. It's supposed to be the legal reason behind having those torrents to begin with, so for one you'd be using it completely legally, and you should not feel bad about it or anything.

One thing you don't ever do is clean them with alcohol and then put them back in the drive. I actually believed in this myth that it cleans up scrathes, but believe me, there's no such thing that does that. All I managed to do with it was destroying my DVD disc drive by using that method a lot of times. After some time, it was unable to read any CDs, only DVDs, and later on it kinda selected what DVDs it wanted to read, and said that the rest were empty, even though they clearly weren't. So yeah, don't do that.

Try Dvdisaster, or take the disc to a specialist. (he/she will polish/abrade off a few micron thickness from the transparent plastic protection layer)

Toothpaste has always worked for me in the past, using this method.

Use buffer.

If those games have CD-keys written on their CDs you can pirate them and use your original CD key to activate them so you don't have to copy crack. It will be just like any regular game you have on your CD.

My Underground disc bought it (second one, only a single cutscene file), so I had to pirate that single disc. At least it wasn't as bad as Underground 2, where I lost the CD-Key but the discs were working...

I remember my Ape EScape 3 didn't work well, may try one of these methods you mentioned so I can finally play it again.

My friend mentioned a method of dipping a scratched CD into a plate filled with dark(!) beer then allowing it to get dry. Dunno if it works though, still have plans of repairing my video DVDs :)

I go to the gamestore in my city, they polish scrached discs for 3€ each disc =)

Just download it from somewhere. You bought it, so you can do it without bothering about all that morality crap.

It depends on where they're scratched. If it's on the transparent 'plastic' side -- the side where you can see through to the shiny data -- they can usually be fixed using special machines made for polishing CDs. Look for a game store near you and ask about it.

If the scratch is on the 'data' side (the side with the label), and goes through to the data itself, there is usually nothing to be done.

Toothpaste worked on my old Oblivion CD which was scratched. Look it up on google. I managed to get it working again by using little of it on the scratched surfaces. That was years ago. It still works. There is 'scratch remover' or whatever being sold. I don't know if they actually work.

When I was young and we had VCDs (yes I'm that old), I'd used only my saliva. Just remember to clean your mouth first, you do not want to infect your cd-rom drive.

Try the abandonware sites/forums, you can usually find games that are somehow "forgotten" by their own devs/publishers.

I used toothpaste, it's not very effective; but it helped a little bit. For me doing it with a bannana made no difference.

Brasso

Why not try go to a place and try get the CD's repaired?

When I used to be an active member on a music torrent site, I used to borrow music cds from the library. They'd usually be pretty scratched up, and the ripping process would produce little flaws. To prevent this, I would use Brasso (metal polishing solution), and it used to do WONDERS. Like magic. But they changed the formula to keep up with the new environmental compliance, and it stopped working. So, I switched to sanding it with a VERY fine grit sandpaper (think 1000+), and then polishing it with headlight polishing liquid. It looked good as new. I got to rip them perfectly, and the library got their cds cleaned. Win-win.

tl;dr
get very fine sandpaper (1000+, but I would do some further research on this)
sand
get headlight polishing liquid
using a clean, soft cloth, and polish

Try rubbing it with a banana (that's what she said) or toothpaste, then washout and put it in the microwave. That's it! Good luck.