does disc resurfacing work?

[Immryr]

i've got a copy of muchi muchi pork / pink sweets which had a scuff mark round the edge of the disc when I bought it, but worked. now it seems to have just given up even though it's mostly just sat in the box.

does anyone have experience having discs repaired or resurfaced? does it work?

[ATTRACTS]

It can but it all depends on the depth of the scratches you are trying to fix.

[Guspaz]

Yes, it does, but it's important not to use the el-cheapo units, because it needs to be done right. JFJ makes some resurfacing machines that stores use that seem to work well. The ones with the visible plastic spiral type disc (which seems to be most on the market), those can easily just make things worse.

My personal experience: I bought a copy of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PSX. It worked on my PS3, but not on my PSOne. I took it back to the store, they resurfaced it for me, and then it's worked fine ever since.

It should be a last resort, because it does remove a small amount of material, and it should never be used on BluRay discs (because their recording surface is incredibly close to the surface and they have a hard-coat on the surface as a result).

The store was using what appears to be the JFJ single-arm model (sells for $500 USD), but they do seem to have units starting at $135 USD. No idea about the effectiveness of those units.

The real resurfacing units (not the plastic-spiral type) often have different grits of sandpaper available so that you can target the repair. For minor issues, you can just buff the disc, which just polishes it. For more severe issues, you can use varying levels of sandpaper discs to grind down below the level of the scratches, moving to finer grit, ending with a buff.

They should theoretically work on almost any disc, no matter how scratched, so long as the recording layer itself isn't damaged. That is to say, as long as there is still enough plastic left for you to grind down the disc to the bottom of the scratch.

[austin532]

After working in retail for over 8 years and resurfacing 1000's of discs, I can say that using a good machine like JFJ works. As Guspaz said it all depends on how deep the scratch is. Scratches on the edge of the disc can be tricky to get out. Blu Ray and dual layer discs can not be fixed unfortunately and GC games can be the most tricky to fix due to there small size.

Stay far away from those cheap plastic spiral machines like Disc Doctor as they only make it worse.

[mvsfan]

its Good to hear that resurfacing works.

Ive also been wondering about cracks. is there any way to repair a crack in a disc that does not go into the recordable part?

I have a beyond oasis disc that has a 1/2 inch crack right next to the center spindle hole but it doesnt go through the written part. Im afraid that it will eventually crack more.

[Guspaz]

Apply a very very sparing amount of superglue applied to the crack on both sides with a toothpick: you don't want to add enough to unbalance the disc when it spins. Optionally add a spindle label sticker on both sides to reinforce. I've never tried this, but that's what googling turns up.

[accaris]

Hmmm every JFJ job I've seen left visible swirl marks. To do it right you really need one of those $3000 water-based machines. With those, you can't tell if the game was resurfaced or if it just came off the factory floor.

[stockspyder]

If you're in Southern California I know one of the best places to get resurfacing done is at Cali games in Hawthorne. I got my games done there (one of which is worth 200 dollars) and the ones that were fixable worked like a charm.

Not gonna lie, as a game shop this place isn't really a destination to me. But as a resurfacing place it is the best as their machines are multi-stage and were 10,000 new.

Games that are messed up from a bad resurfacer might now work even after a good resurfacing, and this is because the disc might not be entirely flat anymore. I brought in some GameCube games that I got broken that couldn't be saved. But they had a policy that the tested them on a system and if they didn't work i didn't get charged. For the more exotic systems this may not stand but maybe you can call to bring your own if you go.

Deep scratches have the highest failure rate for resurfacing as well

[Immryr]

thanks for the replies everyone. anyone have any recommendations for where to get it done in the UK? only places i know that offer it are generic video game shops like grainger games and game. i have no idea if they will have decent machines or not.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

If you're worried about the quality of their work, you can try them out by giving them a cheap cd you have that's scratched (that you're not worried about if it gets destroyed) and ask them to resurface it. Most game stores I think just use a generic tool that's fairly easy to work with so it's not like it needs a super skilled person to do it properly.