Today was a wild research and technology day.
Two weeks ago I got a CD from the Diyanet that I couldn’t believe existed. It had years’ worth of data that would’ve taken me months to gather and process at a cost of a couple thousand dollars. The person who gave it to me said it was his personal copy, the last one he knew of.
And at some point between then and now, before I made a backup, the CD got scratched badly enough that I couldn’t use it. (The data are stored within a Windows program, and I use a Mac — somehow “Does not work on my computer” translated into “Don’t copy files to hard drive.”)
Trying not to panic, I remembered a recent Lifehacker post on how to fix scratched CDs and DVDs and got to work with some toothpaste. I think that helped a little, but not enough for the whole CD to be read. So I read more suggestions and wound up buying a bottle of Goddard’s Long Term Silver Polish at the local supermarket.
Although it doesn’t seem right to use metal polish to repair a scratched CD, it worked really well. Out of the three methods I tried, including toothpaste and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, the silver polish definitely worked the best, with a noticeable reduction in scratches and more of the CD copied to my disk. I buffed a little Chapstick into what was left of the scratches and — Presto! — I was able to load the CD.*
Well, what actually happened was I failed to copy all the files a few more times, called some folks at the Diyanet to see if they could find another copy of the CD, which they did, and then had a friend there send it to me by overnight courier; meanwhile I reformatted my hard drive, erasing and restoring everything, and installed Windows XP using Boot Camp, whereupon I found that the CD was in good enough shape for me to access the data it contained after all.
At this point I don’t know how much time I wasted rubbing a CD, calling Ankara, and having a replacement sent, but at least I’ve got the data.
UPDATE: Holy smokes! The total cost for having the CD sent overnight was $4.14! I don’t know how the cargo people stay in business here…
*Reading more tips for scratched CDs, I wonder if it was the Chapstick that did it.
4 comments ↓
Oh, the things we do for data sometimes. I’m glad you finally got everything worked out.
Your recent outing in NYC being a fine example.
Do you think there is any danger of leaving a silver (or chapstick!) residue inside my computer? I’m not sure I want to apply a topical fix that might rub off.
Also, have you ever used Parallels to run Windows instead of Boot Camp? I find it has a lot more benefits and is easier to use.
I haven’t heard of there being any risk; after buffing the CD there isn’t any visible trace.
I read that some libraries also use Pledge or car wax, but I don’t know if that’s a best practice.
I haven’t tried Parallels yet, though I like the idea of not having to reboot. I just needed something quick and free to see if this CD was usable. It didn’t turn out to be all that quick, but it worked.
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