Cleaning tips

Please post here for issues related to Blu-ray discs
Post Reply
onknight
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2022 4:40 pm

Cleaning tips

Post by onknight »

I was wondering if anyone had any cleaning tips for Blu-rays
what's the best way to clean them and store them once you rip them
Do you have any system for storing
WH14NS40 Blueray drive flash with WH16BS60 Ver 1.03
Linredrive Enabled
dcoke22
Posts: 2560
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2020 11:25 pm

Re: Cleaning tips

Post by dcoke22 »

My strategy involves doing the least cleaning necessary to allow a disc to be read. Every time you touch the data side of the disc, you run the risk of damaging it.

When I need to clean a disc, I generally use plenty of warm tap water and liquid dish soap. The water and dish soap are a lubricant and do a good job cleaning any oils or films off the disc. First, I wet the disc with water out of the tap to remove any larger particles that might be sticking to the disc. Then add soap. Then I lightly use a fingertip in a perpendicular direction (from the inner hole straight to the outer edge and then back again via the shortest path). I slowly rotate the disc, always moving my fingertip in the perpendicular diction until I've cleaned the whole disc. Then rinse with plenty of water until all the soap is gone. Then I set the disc label side on a towel and use a can of air to blast off the remaining water on the data side.

Moving perpendicular (to the path of data) is important. Data is written to a disc in a giant spiral from the inner side to the outer side of the disc. On two layer discs, the second layer starts at the outside and comes back to the inside. (Most drives spin the disc at a constant speed, referred to as constant angular velocity, which is why the read speed goes up as the laser head moves from the inner to the outer side of the disc.) By moving your fingertip perpendicular to the way data is written on the disc, if you happen to damage the disc while cleaning it, you minimize the number of adjacent bytes that are damaged. This increases the odds that the error correction will be able to overcome the damage.

It has been my experience that some drives just won't read some discs. I now have 3 different drives. When a disc read fails in my 'main' drive, I try a different drive. Often, but not always, the other drive will read the disc without error. When none of the drives will work, I try cleaning the disc, which usually allows it to be read. It is rare, but occasionally I have a disc the just won't read. In the two instances I've had, it has always been a UHD and I've been able to exchange the UHD for a different copy, which has worked fine. The data density of UHDs is very high, which makes them harder to correctly read. (For comparison, a UHD might hold 100GB of data in the same amount of physical space that a CD holds about 700MB; that's about a 140x more data on the highest capacity UHD as compared to a CD.)

All bets are off with regard to rental discs and used discs. Some people don't treat discs very well and it might be the case that no amount of cleaning will allow MakeMKV to get a clean rip. That said, starting at the least aggressive cleaning methods before moving on to more aggressive cleaning methods is a reasonable strategy.

Finally, I store my discs in the plastic cases they came in on a shelf. It is possible that the plastic case might off-gas and deposit material on the disc making it harder to read in the future, but generally a blu-ray case hold a disc firmly and securely while preventing the data side of the disc from coming into contact with anything. I keep my rips, so the need for me to rip again in the future is low. I know some people ditch the case and store the disc in a sheet made to store multiple discs and go in a binder. I dislike this method because the data side of the disc is forced to touch (and slide across) the storage case. If any dirt gets in there, it could potentially scratch the disc taking it in or out. That said, my disc collection isn't so large that storing the discs in the case is unreasonable. YMMV of course.
Post Reply