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From: Nuno J. Silva on 12 Jul 2010 17:12
AZ Nomad <aznomad.3(a)PremoveOBthisOX.COM> writes:

> On 27 May 2010 12:08:34 GMT, General Schvantzkoph <schvantzkoph(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I doubt that there is any truth to it. However DVD burners are so cheap
>>that you might as well consider them to be disposable, I certainly
>>wouldn't do anything to optimise their life. In fact even a cleaner kit
>>is questionable as they are priced at 50% of the price of a new burner.
>
> Optical drive cleaning kits are a hoax. Scraping off dirt (read: tiny
> rocks) at high speed is only effective if you want to be sure a drive
> has been destroyed before replacing it. They are only popular because
> idiots see the kits as a tool that they have the skills to operate.

It is okay to see a kit which involves touching the lens. Now I wonder
why are there kits which have a "cleaning disk"... The whole thing is
nonsense, it is /optical/. Unless the disk has a magnetic field strong
enough to grab all the dust but weak enough not to damage the reader, I
don't see the point.

Cleaning an optical device is about cleaning the lens. Using a cloth
might work, but I'd not risk scratching the lens due to some pointy
piece of dust. It would be like cleaning your glasses (if you wear
glasses) with a cloth when there is sand on them.

Perhaps water or some cleaning liquid?

> Now if only I could get my father to quit doing daily defrags on his
> windows machine before he manages to do it during a disk error and
> destroys all his data. (again, popular with idiots because it is one
> of the few tools they feel competant to operate)

A defrag a day. Sounds... clever...

--
Nuno J. Silva
gopher://sdf-eu.org/1/users/njsg
From: B Sellers on 12 Jul 2010 21:54
On 05/27/2010 09:20 AM, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> In article<htli7i$6kg$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>,
> TJ(a)noneofyour.business (TJ) writes:
>
>> About a month ago, my LG DVD burner started making coasters, even
>> though it was still reading discs with no troubles. I investigated,
>> determined that it was probably the burner itself, andbought a new
>> one. That did indeed cure the problem.
>>
>> However, at one point Google led me to an old discussion on the
>> lifetime of burners, where a couple of the participants asserted
>> that if you use a burner (They were talking about CD burners) for
>> reading as well as burning, you will shorten its life considerably.
>> Consequently, as long as my old burner still reads OK, I'll be using
>> it for that and reserving my burner for burning.
>>
>> Makes sense to do that, anyway, just from a wear-and-tear standpoint.
>> But still I'm curious. The whole assertion sounds something like the
>> hardware equivalent of an urban legend to me, but then stranger things
>> are true. Does anybody know if it IS true? Or perhaps it was true of
>> older hardware but not of more modern stuff?
>
> My burner (also an LG, for what it's worth) started doing the same
> thing a while ago. Although I got a new one myself, I took the old
> one apart as much as I could and gave it a thorough cleaning: no
> cleaner kit, just a bit of work with a vacuum cleaner, a spray can,
> and a clean rag. I put it back together and popped it back into the
> machine alongside the new one. It's working just fine again. I've
> been using it for both reading and writing all along.
>
About once a year I pop in a cleaner disk with a very small
and very soft brush. This wipes dust off the lens. I have seen
people use this sort of thing with good resolution to their problems
even on read only CDs. By regular but not frequent cleaning you
avoid the problems that long uncleaned lenses generate.
I don't burn a lot of CD/DVDs but I regularly make my
own bootable disks from iso files on magazine and downloaded.
It makes me feel like I have done something to get a verified
disk out and use to help someone with a problem or as I did
this weekend to download and install an Linux upgrade.
Cleaner disk is only about $20 and get shared between
about 3 or 4 players and drives.
People who smoke or who have roommates that smoke
will have more problems with the optical and other drives.
Same goes for burning incense.

later
bliss
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