Dirty discs? Cleaning CDs and DVDs

Have you any advice for cleaning CDs and DVDs? Denys Vaughan

They are usually best left alone unless they skip or cause other problems. If they need a clean, you can blow the dust off then wipe them down with a damp lint-free cloth. Distilled water and microfibre cloths are recommended.

The main thing is to wipe gently from the centre to the edge, even though it "feels wrong". If a bit of grit scratches across the disc, the hardware error correction will probably deal with it. If you scratch around the groove, you may lose lots of bits in a row, and the error correction will not be able to cope. (A CD is recorded in one long spiral, from the centre.)

If the disc is so dirty that it needs more than water, isopropyl alcohol is the solvent recommended on the web (or http://bit.ly/aj0004).

Web extra: isopropyl alcohol is also used to clean contact pins, cassette deck heads, the lenses of lasers in optical disc drives and similar things. Bear in mind that it is toxic and flammable.