question

[Chris Hendriks]

this isnt really just an xbox question, it has to do with all disks.i heard from about 30 people that if you put toothpaste on the bottom of a cd,dvd, or game then wash it off it will allow badly scratched games to work.it sounds weird to me, is it true?

 

[IDAFC21]

Ive heard that too....im not sure. I know i tried it once a long time ago but i dont remember if it helped or not

 

[CDailey]

Esentially what that does is fill the hole in. The bottom of the disc is just a clear plastic disc. It's like those blank/clear thigns you get in a spindle of cd-r's. If you scratch that, you really have nothing to worry about since there is no data stored on that part of the disc, so filling it with toothpaste/using a disc doctor to grind it down really doesn't help. But it doesn't hurt either. But remember, never scratch the label side of the disc. The data layer is right underneath the label layer and if you scratch through the label hard enough, the disc is ****ed.

 

[8400RPM]

I've heard peanut butter works too. Seriously.

 

[jizzmirk]

Actually, the toothpaste thing works, but there's more to it than just putting it on and washing it off.

First, you have to find a gritty toothpaste. put some on a deep scratch on the disk. With your finger or a cloth, rub the paste hard onto the disk. What you're trying to do is to take the edge of the scratch. If you imagine the scratch as a "V" shaped groove on the disc's surface. The "V" works like a prism to the CD/DVD laser and refracts the light trying to get to the data. By rubbing the toothpaste into the groove, you lessen the prism effect.

Ideally, you'll want to feather the rubbed portion of the CD and try to leave the disc as translucent/transparent as possible.

Mind you, there are better and easier methods of fixing scratches, but the toothpaste deal is more like an emergency fix, if anything.