How to recover an SD disk from scratches. How to polish a blank with toothpaste at home

Let's start with the fact that there are disks that cannot be restored at all. It is very easy to “kill” a CD, but restoring it is a problem.

And this method will not give a 100% guarantee that the information will be recovered. But in 80% of cases it was noted positive result, even with seemingly hopeless disks (I installed Windows 7 and copied it to a new “blank”).

My advice: for storage important information use disks from well-known manufacturers (TDK, Verbatim, SONY, Samsung, LG).
These discs have a higher quality coating (resistant to mechanical damage) compared to cheap Chinese blanks.
And it is easier to “remove” and restore information from higher quality disks.

So let's get started:

1) First of all, you need to clean the disk from contamination, carefully wipe it with a damp cloth to clean the monitor, or rinse it under warm (not hot) water with a soft cotton cloth. Precisely carefully and with movements from the center to the edges.

2) Let the disc dry and gently wipe with a dry cotton cloth.

3) Prepare several ear sticks and a cotton swab, as well as a medical solution of brilliant green (commonly called “ZELONKA”).
We will use this tool to restore a scratched CD or DVD disc.

4) Take and generously apply “green paint” to the disc in an even layer

5) Then rub the green stuff over the damaged disc with a cotton swab. We do this with light (without effort), quick movements, so as not to let the “green stuff” dry out.
If the green paint has dried out, apply fresh paint to the area and repeat the rubbing procedure.

6) After this, the disk acquires a slightly greenish tint, but this does not affect operation.
After 5-10 minutes of drying, you can insert the disc into the drive.

7) If necessary, repeat steps 4-6.

The essence of the method is that the “green stuff” has a similar color scheme with the surface of a CD. By applying green pigment, we paint over the scratches. Thus reducing the laser refraction points from the reading head of any CD player or drive.

After such manipulations, programs for reading information from damaged media (DeadDiscDoctor 1.0, File Salvage 2.0, IsoBuster 1.9 Pro, etc.) will have much more likely to have a positive result.
For example, you can view programs

Working surface optical disks easily damaged - protective layer becomes covered with scratches even with not too intensive use. Deep defects often lead to the impossibility of extracting information from damaged media. Next, we will tell you how to restore a scratched disc by polishing using toothpaste, GOI paste, and also consider some “harmful” tips from the CD Resuscitation Network.

Rules for working with damaged optical discs

Let's say right away that an unreadable media with deep scratches It will be possible to restore in this way only partially at best. Moreover, you will have to act extremely carefully, otherwise the surface can be completely damaged. It would be better to first practice on old unnecessary media before restoring a disk with valuable information - this way you can evaluate the effectiveness of the method and, as they say, get better at it.

And do not try to immediately resort to using the method described below when a reading error occurs - check the disk on another computer - often it is the DVD drive that causes the problems. In addition, there are a lot of applications that allow you to extract maximum information from scratched blanks thanks to a modified reading algorithm. One of effective solutions- Durable Copy.

It is advisable to use the program to work with discs that have already been restored by polishing, because we have already noted that heavily damaged media can never be restored 100%.

How to polish a blank with toothpaste at home

The most affordable and safe way polishing - using toothpaste:

The movements during the polishing process should not be too intense so that the surface does not heat up quickly. There is no need to put pressure on the blank either. After 15-20 minutes, rinse the disc thoroughly in warm water. Its surface may become matte due to the appearance of many microscopic scratches, but deep damage will become much less noticeable, which should have a better effect on the readability of the disc.

Dry the optical drive, try inserting it into the DVD drive. If your goal is to retrieve photos, important documents, etc., use Durable Copy or similar app. Surely this time there will be noticeably more copied intact information.

If necessary, restoring the working surface using the method described above can be repeated, but it makes sense to carry it out for no more than an hour. As practice shows, polishing with paste for too long causes the opposite effect - there is less readable data on the media.

Professional polishing method

For truly valuable and expensive disks, such artisanal methods should no longer be used. To obtain an acceptable result, the polycarbonate base will need to be polished with fine abrasive GOI paste (sold in construction stores) using an electric drill with a grinding attachment:

If you don’t have a power tool, polishing with GOI paste can also be done manually, but a positive result is far from guaranteed, and the process can take a long time.

How not to restore optical discs

You can often read a lot on the Internet alternative ways restoration of scratched compacts. For example, sometimes it is recommended to polish simply with soft or denim cloth. It is clear that you cannot polish the surface with non-abrasive materials. It will simply overheat and the media will no longer be recoverable.

Another extreme option ( real advice“specialists” from the Internet) - polishing with fine-grained sandpaper. This method can immediately ruin the surface without even making an effort. The same applies to heating the disk in the microwave, under a table lamp, etc.

Another popular tip from the Internet is to cover the scratch with “green paint” or even completely treat the surface of the compact with it.

Problem: scratched disc

If you've ever dealt with a scratched disc, you know that scratches cause significant damage to the contents of the disc. Where do scratches come from? There are several reasons why scratches appear on a disk:

• Frequent use of the disc (the CD-Rom itself may scratch the disc);
• careless handling of the disc (for example, the disc is stored without packaging);
• accidental drops of the disc on the floor;
• other influences.

The result of scratches is sectors on the disk that the laser cannot read. Why is this happening? Because the grooves on the disc, i.e. scratches bend the laser path. And, although the information under the scratches itself is preserved, the laser cannot reach it. Thus, scratches block access to information on the disk and make its use inconvenient or impossible. For example, if a movie is recorded on a disc, then when the film approaches a scratched place on the disc, the image may begin to “jump” and stop completely. This greatly spoils the impression of the film, and sometimes makes it impossible to watch. And if the disk contains important text documents, then there is no need to say that unreadable sectors are completely unnecessary there! What to do?

Is it even possible to extract information from a scratched disk?

After studying information on the Internet, we realized that this issue is the subject of controversy. Some believe that it is possible to recover data from a scratched disk, others disagree with this, and still others doubt it. We wondered if there was even an answer to this question? We did not find any special experiments on the Internet, and the materials we found turned out to be dubious. Therefore, we decided to conduct our own independent experiment.

Data Extraction Methods

We know that there are two possible approaches to extract data from damaged disk, namely software method And mechanical method. Software method is to recover data using special programs(such as “Trust Copy”, etc.). It allows you to read damaged files by skipping unreadable places, i.e. extract everything that can be extracted. Mechanical method based on mechanical polishing of the disc surface. This method allows you to increase the availability of data reading.

Independent experiment

We want to explore the mechanical method in practice, because... We want to recover data that may seem lost. We also use the program because... standard means copying will not allow us to extract data from a file that is even slightly damaged ( standard program will immediately display a file reading error and stop working). And we want to try to extract all available information from the disk.

Let's assume that polishing the scratched surface of a disc allows you to erase the scratches completely and/or make them less deep. Thus, the problem of laser path curvature can be eliminated completely or partially and the information on the disk will be read. Let this be our hypothesis. Based on this hypothesis, we conducted an independent experiment. And now we illustrate here the step-by-step process of the procedure and present the results obtained. We hope that you will be interested in reading this information and that you will find something useful for yourself.

The task The experiment is to find answers to the following questions:

• Is retrieving data from a scratched disk a solvable problem?
• What does the disc polishing method do? Is polishing real recovery data thanks to better data availability for the laser?

Restoring a scratched disk using improvised means

Stages of the experiment:

1. We took it completely undamaged new disk(without scratches) and checked its readability using the Reliable Copy disk reading program.
2. We scratched the new disc thoroughly using a sharp-edged seashell and a piece of granite.
3. We checked the readability of the damaged disk using the Reliable Copy disk reading program and compared it with the original unscratched copy using the Sync Last Files Professional program to find different files.
4. We sanded and polished the disc for 30 minutes using a regular toothpaste as an abrasive material. In this case, we sanded for 10 minutes using a medium-hard toothbrush and toothpaste, and polished for 20 minutes using a rag, toothpaste and water.
5. We tested the readability of the sanded and polished disc using the Reliable Copy disc reader program and compared it with the original unscratched copy using the Sync Last Files Professional program.
6. Next, we polished the disc for another 60 minutes using a rag, toothpaste and water.
7. And then we again checked the readability of the polished disk using the "Trust Copy" disk reading program and compared it with the original unscratched copy using the "Sync Last Files Professional" program.

At the end of the experiment you can see its results ( conclusions).

Stage 1. Checking the readability of an undamaged disc.

Photos 1 and 2. We took a completely undamaged disc (no scratches).

Photo 3. We inserted this disk into the drive and launched the "Reliable Copy" disk reading program to make a master copy of the disk.

Screenshot 1. Here you can see that we are prepared for copying: we want to copy the disk in order to use it as a master copy in the future. As the disk becomes damaged, we will compare it with the reference copy in order to understand whether we were able to recover the data. IN right column there is a source for copying files, i.e. the disk itself. In the left column there is a blank directory in which we will store the original, i.e. an undamaged copy of the disk.

Screenshot 2. Disk analysis in progress.

Screenshot 3. Files are being copied from an undamaged disk.

Screenshot 4. No error notifications appeared. All files were copied successfully.

Stage 2. Scratching a good disc.

Photo 4. We prepared tools to damage the surface of the disk: a sea shell with sharp edges and a piece of granite.

Photo 5. Applying scratches. To complicate the restoration task, we deliberately inflicted scratches of different thicknesses and types: transverse and longitudinal lines and zigzags, which are the most dangerous for disk data:

Photo 6. We thoroughly scratched the disc. The scratches were deep, but not so deep as to damage the information layer itself (they did not scratch the disk right through).

Stage 3. Checking the readability of a damaged disk.

Photo 7. We inserted the scratched disc into the drive and launched the Reliable Copy disc reading program. We are wondering if this program will be able to extract the data and check the number of files being read.

Screenshot 5. The copying program is trying to read our scratched disk. It can be seen that some files cannot be read at all, others only partially.

Screenshot 6. The scratched disc has been copied. As can be seen from the table, only 142 files ( 5% ) were copied successfully, 2560 files were only partially read, and 8 files were not read at all.

The fact that the files were copied does not mean that they are intact. Let's perform a byte-by-byte comparison of the copied data with the reference copy using the Sync Last Files Professional program.

Screenshot 7. The Sync Last Files Professional program shows the result of the comparison.

Screenshot 8. Comparison result close-up. 2568 different files were identified.

As you can see from the table, there is a difference in the total number of elements shown by Sync Last Files Professional and Reliable Copy. There are several reasons for this:

• Sync Last Files Professional counts both files and directories. For example, there are 469 directories on our disk.
• "Sync Last Files Professional" is excluded from the results identical files and directories, since it is designed to synchronize different files and directories.
• "Sync Last Files Professional" will synchronize when there is a file in one of the directories being compared, but not in the other.

This means that Sync Last Files Professional should have found 2568 different files. 2562 different files were identified, which is less than expected. Why? This could happen because some of the files copied at the first stage contained empty data (for example, there was a large picture in BMP format, the damage of which occurred in empty place). But the main thing here is that damaged files no more than he thinks corrupted program"Durable Copy".

Stage 4. Grinding and polishing the scratched disc (first stage).

Photo 8. We prepared tools for polishing a scratched disc: a medium-hard toothbrush and toothpaste as an abrasive material.

Photo 9. We applied toothpaste to the brush and began sanding the disc.

Photo 10. The sanding process with a brush lasted only 10 minutes, after which we took a rag.

Photo 11. We abandoned the brush and took a rag instead. We applied toothpaste to the disc and polished vigorously for another 20 minutes, periodically wetting the disc with water. The change from a toothbrush to a rag was due to the fact that the rag was softer and more delicate than a brush, which itself left scratches, although it was soft. We hope that the abrasive force of the toothpaste and rag will be enough to polish.

Photo 12. After that we washed the disc. As you can see in the photo, the surface of the disc is no longer shiny: it has become matte due to polishing. Through matte surface You can see our scratches, which are no longer as deep as at the beginning.

Stage 5. Checking the readability of a polished disc.

Photo 13. We wiped the disk dry, inserted it into the drive and launched the “Reliable Copy” disk reading program.

Screenshot 9. 694 files successfully copied ( 26% ). Partially copied 2016 files. 0 files were not copied.

Screenshot 10. Result of comparison using the Sync Last Files Professional program.

Screenshot 11. Close-up comparison result.

Comparison of the resulting copy with the standard using the Sync Last Files Professional program in byte-by-byte comparison mode also showed positive dynamics. Different 2016 files. This means not only that we have improved the laser readability of the data, but also that the data itself really preserved under the scratched surface of the disc.

Stage 6. Polishing a scratched disc (second stage).

Photo 14. Inspired by the initial success, we again applied toothpaste to the rag and began to polish the disc with force. From time to time we wet the disc with water and continued polishing. The polishing process lasted 60 minutes.

Photo 15. We then washed the disc thoroughly with warm water.

Photo 16. We wiped the disc dry and saw the final result of our efforts: after polishing, our scratches became less deep, although we were not able to polish the disc completely. But we still see progress in polishing a disc using this method.

We inserted the disc into the drive and launched the Trusted Copy disc reading program.

Stage 7. Final check of the readability of a polished disc using the Reliable Copy disc reading program.

Screenshot 12. The program copies data from a polished disk.

Screenshot 13. Entire 1099 files copied ( 41% ). 1606 files were partially copied. 5 files were not copied.

Screenshot 14. The Sync Last Files Professional program found 1582 different files using a byte-by-byte comparison.

Screenshot 15. Close-up result of comparison using the Sync Last Files Professional program.

And again we see positive dynamics: after extensive polishing, we were able to read an additional 405 files, while after the first iteration we were able to read an additional 552 files. At the same time, although the overall dynamics are positive, we see the beginning of progressive destruction of files by long-term polishing: after the first polishing, 0 files were unreadable, and after the second polishing, there were already 5 files.

conclusions:

1. Our experiment shows that retrieving data from a scratched disk is a solvable problem;
2. Polishing the disc does result in data recovery due to better data accessibility to the laser;
3. In 1.5 hours of polishing, we were able to extract 967 files from 2568 that were initially damaged, which was confirmed by byte-by-byte comparison of the files with the reference copy;
4. Moderate polishing improves data accessibility to the laser, but prolonged polishing may result in data loss;
5. Polishing works well small scratches, but does not cope with deep ones;
6. Polishing by hand is a labor-intensive and time-consuming process.

The essence of the problem

This malfunction represents damage to the magnetic plates hard drive in the form of circular scratches (gaps) resulting from the impact of magnetic heads on the surface of the plates. When the heads hit the surface of the plates, the heads fail, and the smallest metal dust appears in the HDA from the damaged magnetic layer covering the plates. Scratches on the surface of the platters are the most problematic damage when recovering data from a HDD. This is due to the fact that new block heads installed in a sawn disk, with high degree is likely to quickly fail due to the presence of scratches and tiny magnetic dust on the surfaces of the HDD platters.

Causes of gashes:

• various mechanical influences on the drive, shocks, falls, vibration;
• poor-quality power supply to the drive;
• defects in the manufacture of the drive at the manufacturer's plant;
• physical wear of the heads caused by long-term work 24/7;
• incorrect disconnection of the hard drive from a running computer;

Symptoms of scratches on the surface of magnetic plates:

• the disk makes a loud, periodically repeating knock with a distinct metallic clanging sound;
• the hard drive motor spins up, but after a few knocks on the heads it may stop;
• The disk is not detected in any diagnostic program, and if it is detected, it does not show its capacity.

Impact of the problem on user files

Gaps on the surface of magnetic plates are the most serious damage that fatally affects the possibility of successful recovery of information from hard drives. The very fact of the presence of scratches on the disk plates indicates that the information cannot be completely restored, because Data located in the scratch area is already irretrievably lost. In the best case, it is possible to restore user files from undamaged areas of the plates.

Photos of disks with circular cuts on plates

The photographs below show disks with fatal damage to the magnetic layer on the platters. The first example shows a photo of a disk whose heads have scratched a deep groove on the magnetic plates near the spindle in the parking area. What caused the appearance of great amount fine metal dust and shavings that have settled on all parts of the hard drive. In the second example, a photograph is taken of a 2.5" disk with external parking, whose heads have almost completely erased the thin magnetic layer and the lower part of the HDD hermetic block is visible through the transparent glass plates. Both disks received such damage due to the fact that they were left for a long time by the owners in the switched on state. the presence of loud knocking sounds coming from failed heads. The damage was different in type because the 3.5" disks have plates made of aluminum coated with a magnetic layer, while the 2.5" disks have plates made of tempered glass.

Method for restoring information when cutting marks on the surface of magnetic plates

The appearance of scratches on the surface of the plates primarily indicates a failure of the magnetic head unit, because It is the heads that, when they hit the plate, form an annular cut on it and at the same moment they themselves fail. To recover data from a hard drive that has scratches on the surface of the platters, you must first replace the magnetic head unit from the exact same drive of the same model and volume. Next, using the PC3000 DataExtractor software and hardware complex, sector-by-sector copying of the disk is performed, taking into account the location of the ring scratch on the plates. Those. if the scratch is at the beginning of the disc, then copying is done in reverse from the end; if the scratch is at the end of the disc, then copying is done forward in ascending order of LBA; if the scratch is in the middle of the platter, then copying is done first to the scratch, and then in reverse from the end to the scratch. This method allows you to subtract maximum amount data from a damaged drive. The presence of scratches on several HDD plates or just one is also taken into account. If the scratch is located on only one plate, and the others are not damaged, then first the data is completely read out from the plates that do not have cuts, and then the damaged plate is read out as much as possible. This can only be done on PC3000 DataExtractor, because This complex, thanks to working with disks in technological mode, allows you to see which LBA sectors are located on which platters. Please note that discs with such damage can only be copied sector by sector, excluding scratch areas. If you attempt to copy information from folders and files, then there is a high probability that the disk will try to read a file located directly in the burn zone and then the hard disk head will instantly fail. An additional negative feature of data recovery in the presence of scratches on the disk platters is the need to use several donor disks, and not one, as in simple cases. This is due to the formation of fine metal dust inside the HDA, which appears due to damage to the magnetic layer of the plates as a result of impact of the heads. Cases often arise when the disk platters are so badly scratched by the heads that data recovery from them is generally impossible. This happens when a knocking disc with faulty unit magnetic heads remain long time when turned on, the heads manage to cause significant damage to the plates.

Why a disk with sawed-off plates cannot be used in the future

When it comes to disks with ring cuts on the plates, we can only talk about data recovery. Even if you replace the heads and temporarily restore the performance of the HDD, then when you try to use it in the future, the new heads will definitely get on the burn area on the platters and will instantly fail again.

Despite the emergence of a number of portable media used to store large amounts of information, CDs are still considered one of the most durable and reliable in this group. They are less prone to causeless breakdowns, but are not protected from physical influences and as a consequence, mechanical damage. A couple of scratches on the surface of a CD are enough for the media to stop working correctly or be readable altogether, “burying” a significant part of the data important to the user.

But there is no need to despair: there is still a chance to repair the equipment. For this purpose, there are special commercial kits available for sale and a lot of advice on the Internet designed to help restore the original state of the disk.

CD/DVD preparation

Before removing scratches from a disc, its surface should be cleaned of dust and fingerprints, since dirt could be the root cause of the breakdown.

This can be done in several ways:

1. Using non-abrasive products.
2. Wipe heavily soiled media carefully with a soft cloth.
3. Hold under running slightly warm water.

After shaking off the water from the CD, you need to dry it by placing it on a paper towel without getting wet. This is done in order to understand the extent of the damage: if the depth of the damage reaches the metal layer, the media cannot be saved on its own.

Removing defects on the CD/DVD surface

It is possible to cope with this task at home, the main thing is to know how. It is easy to remove scratches from a disc; various household products are used for this - from Vaseline to toothpaste.

Waxing with polish, car wax or other creamy texture works well when the polycarbonate coating shows signs of heavy wear. In this case, the carrier is covered with one of the listed products, the excess of which is then removed with a lint-free cloth. This method will help temporarily, since it does not help remove defects, but only fills in abrasions. After successfully using it, you should do backup copy information from a damaged CD, further use which will remain in doubt.

The following method (how to remove scratches from a disc with toothpaste) is very simple. It consists of polishing the top layer of the CD, thinning it and thereby reducing the depth of damage. You should resort to it at the very last moment, if more gentle options do not work.

It is advisable to use a paste based on baking soda as it is the most effective. The substance is applied to a smooth cloth (a napkin for glasses is suitable) and with its help it is distributed over the scratch perpendicular to the digital tracks. This will protect the media from the appearance of new, more dangerous flaws.

It will take about 2-5 minutes to polish the disc in a similar way, then the paste is carefully washed off under warm water and the CD is allowed to dry in the open air on its own.

Both methods are equally effective in dealing with the task described (how to remove scratches from an Xbox disk).

Damage to Xbox CD

If a defect is detected on the disk for game console you should make sure that she is not the culprit of the problem. Xbox sometimes has a similar flaw, and if it was purchased recently, there is a chance that the unusable media will be replaced with a new one by technical support.

If exchange and compensation for damage are not possible, then the main methods for removing scratches from an Xbox 360 disk are those already described using toothpaste or polish.

Caring for portable media

The best way to solve a problem is to prevent it from occurring. To delay the confrontation with the question of how to remove scratches from a disk, you should provide it with proper operating conditions:

• It is necessary to clean heavy stains with specialized means, using gentle movements in the direction away from central hole to the edge of the CD. Under no circumstances should you wipe the surface of the disk in a circle - this creates a risk of data loss.
• The media should be stored away from direct sunlight in a CD/DVD folder. This method will provide fragile disks with the proper level of security and take up minimal space.
• Remove media from optical drive you need to hold it by the edges or the inner ring.

By following these instructions, the user will protect himself from unexpected loss of information and may never face the problem of how to remove scratches from a disk.