Lens Cleaner and DVD surface cleaner

[creeper6996]

Two issues or questions:

#1 Do CD/DVD burner lens cleaners really work? It's a CD that has a few little sprouts of threads on the side that goes against your lens and cleans it. Anyone ever try those with any luck?

#2 How about the actual CD/DVD cleaner, like a spin doctor or whatever. Anything under $100 that actually works? I know that re-surfacing machines cost much $$$, but I'm looking for a cheaper alternative. Right now, I'm finding myself using water and a cotton cloth on a lot of my originals.

Thanks in advance,
Creeper6996

 

[mike20021969]

use with caution and be careful what brand you buy.i got one ages ago for a technics cd player because an audio cd kept skipping.after i'd used it,most of my other cd's skipped too and i had to replace with a new cd player.

 

[saugmon]

1) I also suggest using caution with those lens cleaning discs. I can attest to the damage that they can cause.

As long as you keep your discs clean,shouldn't be no need of using those hard lens cleaning discs,especially in dvd-rw drives. That cleaning disc is a last resort,before replacing a certain drive-which is usually the stand alone players. Those issues with a dirty laser lens would be pixellation and freezing.

By using quality media like taiyo yuden/verbatim,a burn of 4x-8x,no multitasking,keep compression to a minimum,keep burner's firmware up to date,and no paper labels : That will prevent a lot of playback issues with stand alone players.

I've burned over 3600+ backups using my benq 1620A and no issues with it,and no laser lens cleaning disc was run through it.

2) I have the skipdr,but the manual winding unit. It didn't help me one bit.Maybe the motorized skipdr may be better? Walmart should have them for under $40

If I had any badly scratched discs,I'd take them to a local rental store and have them polish them.A lot of them don't charge anything,but don't be in a big hurry.

I use eyeglass cleaner and lint free-silk rags to keep my discs clean,before they are placed into any of my drives. You can get a bottle of plastic eyeglass lens for well under $2 and it'll last a long time. A couple squirts on both sides of disc,wipe them from the inner hub to the outer-but not in a circular motion.

 

[creeper6996]

Thanks for the info

 

[mmdavis]

I have used a couple of lens cleaners, one by Digital and one by cleanDR. They actually did remove some dust that had built up inside the drive. I guess all these other people keep their drives cleaner than I do and don't get that problem? Maybe if I suggested a little more vacuuming to my wife........well, maybe not.

 

[creeper6996]

Yeah, no sense in getting the "war department" riled up, LOL.