In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt "Damian said:
Possibly.
But if the laser is dirty, he'd need that anyway.
Sometimes it pays to do things with stuff that's going into the scrap
heap that isn't recommended for working devices.
Just like they say, NEVER EVER open a hard-drive.
I've had a couple with bad bearings that couldn't even be started up.
So, against all advice, I opened the drive, lubricated the bearings, and
got the thing to work well enough that I copied the data over onto
another drive. The relubricated drive then continued to work for over
two more years; but it was relegated to the "non-trustworthy" set.
When you have to trash something anyway, sometimes it PAYS to ignore
advice against doing things that will supposedly ruin the thing. After
all, what have you got to lose?
I learned this as a kid, when my mother used to throw out old
alarm-clocks that didn't work. I salvaged them, took them apart,
cleaned them, and put them back together. *Completely* unrecommended by
the manufacturer, you understand, who made good money out of selling new
mechanical clocks about every year or so to people.
The first two or three I took apart, I never managed to get back
together. From then on, only about one in ten didn't resume running as
good or better than from the factory, when I finished. I still have one
out in the garage that still works after close to fifty years now ...
One my mother had discarded because it was "broke".
What loss is it if you "break" something that's already broken?
And a CD drive with a dirty laser head is just that: Something you
SCRAP, not repair. Taking it to a repairman would cost more than the
price of a new drive. However, running a "cleaning disk" under the
thing costs a buck or two at most; and if it gets the drive to work,
then it saves a bunch of money.
If not, then you haven't lost much, have you?
Certainly not a good drive, which you didn't have anyway.
Geesh.
If it won't write properly, then *TRY* cleaning it.
If that doesn't work, THEN throw it away and buy a new one.
Complaining that using a cleaning-disk *might* destroy an already dead
drive is ... Well, pretty dumb, in my opinion.
Many things that are quite dumb to do with a *working* device, actually
make quite good sense to try and rescue something that's going in the
trash otherwise. So you might destroy an already dead drive. So bloody
WHAT?
Geesh.
If you're trying to be "helpful",
instead of yelling, "Don't do that!"
why not give a valid alternative?
