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Unless you're obsessively diligent, swapping out game discs, CDs and DVDs tends to lead to scuffs, smudges and scratches on said circular storage mediums. And if you have kids, abrasion is as inevitable as the proverbial peanut butter sandwich in the VCR.
Fortunately, disc scuffage doesn't usually wipe the data thereon (it's buried deep beneath), though it will often render it buggy if not completely inaccessible by your videogame system, CD or DVD drive or player because the protective polycarbonate plastic layer is no longer consistently transparent.
You can try to buff out these scratches with a humble, consumer-level cloth & hand-crank disc cleaner/device, often to fine effect but sometimes, not; sometimes actually deforming the disc in the process. Alternately, you can take your blemished disc(s) to a retail or service outlet equipped with a commercial-grade disc restoring machine, but you'll be charged anywhere from $2 to $10 for the service.
A third solution between the two: The Disc-Go-Pod Plus, which is the "light commercial" version of the polishing machines widely used by the same shops charging for restoration services. Smaller than a toaster and almost as easy to use, you simply top-load and anchor your damaged disc, fill the back-side reservoir with special cleaning solution, close the lid, press go, walk away. Five minutes later, after a solid cycle of precision polishing and fastidious buffing of machinist caliber exactitude, then a final hand-wipe clean-up, poof: Good as new and just as shiny, too.
There's also a 10 and 15 minute cycle for heavy to severe restoration jobs.
Clean up and storing the unit can be a bit messy, so spending a day with many discs is advised - you can't just let it sit there for any length of time or the liquid in the reservoir dries up and cakes everything.
Reportedly, you can repair the same disc dozens of times (not that you'd need to, hopefully) before it gets too thin (a 10X test saw no notable thinning but a whole lot of shiny).
The only obvious shortcoming of the Disc-Go-Pod Plus is its price tag; at half a grand (give or take) for the unit and replacements supplies such as extra cleaning solution and buffer pads - known in the razor & blades biz as "consumables" - are going to cost you more over time. Ergo, you may need a great many marred discs to warrant purchasing it - which explains why Disc-Go-Pod-Plus is so popular with local libraries and rental stores.
Then again, if you ever had entrepreneurial aspirations, you could also set up your own little restoration service in your garage, undercut the local repair shop - heck, become the local repair shop, charge too much, have it paid for in no time and get your own discs cleaned for free - from home.
Reviewed: Jan. 02, 2006
Type: Hardware, HomeTech, Utility
From: Disc Go Technologies Inc.
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