How to Recover Compact Discs and Other Related Media After a Major Flood.

Do you have water damaged digital media?
Have you ever found your DVDs in an icy cold bath?
Has your city or town been recently devastated by a major flood?

If you answered "YES" to one or more of the above questions, you may have already won!

Read on for details.

Step 1: Step the First

First you must have water damaged and/or dirty discs to begin with, or else this whole thing just won't work.

Ok, assuming you have the discs, carefully remove them from their cases. If they are stuck to the paper inserts, remove the whole thing, do not try to remove the paper at this point.

Step 2: Step the Second

Place discs into a container filled with clean water. USE NO SOLVENTS, as this will destroy your discs, only use clean water.

Let the discs soak in the water for some time, at least 30 minutes, but no longer than 16 hours, as this will lead to further water damage, and may make the discs completely unrecoverable.

During this soaking time any paper stuck to the discs will fall away, hopefully.

Step 3: Step the Third

After they have soaked for some time, gently rub them over with a soft wet cloth, one at a time, whilst they are STILL IMMERSED. Do not rub them over out of the water, as when they are in the water there is sufficiant lubrication from the water to allow the particulate matter on the discs to move away without scratching the disc. If you rub it over out of the water the cloth and the disc will dry and the particulate matter I mentioned before will stand a much higher chance of scratching the disc than if it were in the water.

After you rub them over, then take them from the container from whence they were and dunk them a couple of time, to rinse off anything left over, then place them into another container, again filled with clean water. USE NO SOLVENTS, only use clean water.

Then let then soak again, for between 30 minutes and 16 hours.

Step 4: Step the Forth

After they have soaked for some time, again you must rub them over with a soft cloth whilst they are STILL IMMERSED. Then dunk and rinse them and place them onto soft absorbent cloth to dry, label side up, for around 30 - 90 minutes. DO NOT PUT THEM IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT as this will warp and destroy your discs that you have worked so hard to clean.

After 30 - 90 minutes turn the discs over and let them dry for another 30 - 90 minutes on the other side.

Step 5: Step the Fifth

Once they are dry, take each disc in turn and dry with a MICROFIBRE or a CHAMOIS cloth to remove any traces of water and ro remove smears and whatnot from the face of the information. Do not use any other type of cloth, or you will scratch up your discs something chronic.

A microfibre cloth is similar to a chamois, you can get lens cleaning cloths or glasses cleaning cloths or things like that. Do not use woven microfibre or a chamois intended for cleaning a car.

Once they are dry and clean stack them neatly to prepare for the next step.

Addendum : as has been noted by mdog93, stacking CDs is one of the best ways to scratch them. As you don't want to scratch your discs, hence why you are cleaning them in this instructable, you could perhaps lay a sheet of paper or something soft and possible absorbent betwixt they. Word.

Step 6: Step the Sixth

Now you have your clean and dry discs, but no cases. You could always clean the cases, but that is not covered in this in structable. Instead I will show you something just as labourious but not as dirty.

We are to make sleeves for Compact Discs from A4 sheets of paper.

First you will need sheets of A4 paper, the discs we cleaned in the prior steps, a pen, something to lean on and a whole heap of spare time.

Step 7: Step the Seventh

To make the sleeves, first take your A4 paper, and fold in in half along it's shortest edge, as shown. Then, BEFORE YOU PUT THE DISC IN, write the name of the film, game or whatnot on to the middle of the half sheet you just made by folding the sheet in half.

Now, once you have written the title upon the page, turn the paper over, then place the CD between the layers of paper, roughly in the middle, fold the sides in about 2.5cm (an inch) then fold the corners up, as shown, and turn the whole thing over again, and you will see that you have made a CD sleeve that looks just like the one that I made, that you can see here.