Can you Repair a Scratched CD or DVD with Toothpaste?

Be it a music album, a movie or simply data that you decided to store on a CD or DVD, these devices often end up being scratched and readers have a hard time accessing their data, or they are simply inaccessible. There is an “urban legend” that says they can be repaired using toothpaste, but does this really work? In this article we are going to tell you how to repair a CD or DVD with toothpaste , and if it really is something that works or on the contrary it is something that is useless.

In most cases, the scratches a CD, DVD or BluRay may have are superficial and, fortunately, these devices have a transparent polycarbonate protective layer in the reading area. Therefore, to know if a CD can be repaired or not, the first thing to consider is the depth of these scratches : if they are superficial, you can probably do something, but if they are deep or if the CD is broken, then you can say goodbye to it and use it as a coaster.

cd toothpaste

How to repair a CD, DVD or BluRay with toothpaste

The first thing you should do is clean the CD, DVD or BluRay reading surface as best you can. For this you can use either a micro fiber cloth or a bit of toilet paper or kitchen towels with sanitary alcohol (although if it is isopropyl better than better). Rub the surface vigorously with circular movements, in order to remove any dirt that may have been deposited in the grooves caused by scratches.

Clean CD or DVD

In this case, do not be afraid to add too much alcohol or even soap and water, since they are waterproof and if you dry them well then you will not have any problem. When the scratches are very superficial, simply doing this, the CD is likely to work again after cleaning the dirt deposited in the grooves.

Now we are going to proceed to use the toothpaste. Deposit a small amount of it on the disc’s reading surface (about the size of a chickpea) and spread it over the entire surface with your finger, with special emphasis on the scratched areas. Once spread, leave it at that for a couple of minutes, and then remove the toothpaste with kitchen paper or toilet paper. Once removed, rub it well with a clean micro fiber cloth. Do not use alcohol or soapy water in this step.

Repair CD with toothpaste

If the scratches were very large, it is likely that at the end of this process you will see that they have significantly reduced, and even the most superficial ones have completely disappeared. After this, you can proceed to test if it works again.

Does repairing CD or DVD with toothpaste really work?

Again, it depends. When a CD, DVD or BluRay is scratched and the reader is not able to make it work properly, it is generally because scratches generate reflections in the lens of the reader and the reader does not interpret it correctly, generating errors. Repairing it with toothpaste sometimes serves to avoid this since we will have removed the deposited dirt and we will have left a matte layer on it, which sometimes prevents the reader from misreading the data.

Is it a myth or a reality? We can say that it is a reality, but that on many occasions it does not work and it is of no use because the scratches were too severe. In other words, working works but it is not foolproof .

Other ways to repair a CD, DVD or BluRay

There are some other methods that supposedly serve to repair a scratched CD circulating almost like rumors on the Internet. One of them is to approach it to a 60W lit bulb so that the heat «melts» the scratches, but we already tell you that this method does not work .

Another method is to use wax to cover scratches. It is a method similar to that of toothpaste, but instead uses wax for furniture , and the effect is quite similar, even better in some cases.

Finally, the other alternative method of repairing a scratched CD would be to zealously cover the scratches .

Repair CD with zeal

In this case, the only thing we will be doing is “cleaning” the dirt that has gotten into the grooves when removing the heat, most of it remaining stuck to the adhesive. However, this would be equivalent to the first step that we told you before (cleaning it with alcohol or soap and water) but it is even less effective . Don’t even bother trying.