Repair scratches on damaged DVDs

Yesterday, I had to console my distraught son about his scratched Scooby-Doo DVDs. They were throwing read errors, making his beloved shows unwatchable. In there was a lesson about keeping good care of his things, but I just had to try and salvage the DVDs. That’s what good Dads do, right? So I hit the web and found lots of potential remedies, some more believable than others: toothpaste, Silvo/Brasso, banana, peanut butter, vaseline. Given enough time and supplies, I probably would have tried them all.

What I did try was vaseline (petroleum jelly). It seemed the easiest and quickest. And low and behold, it worked! The DVDs in question were only slightly scratched in places, and the scratches were not deep, which is probably why it worked. If the scratches were deeper, or into the actual media, I would have been SOL. Here’s what I did:

1. I did NOT cover the entire DVD with vaseline, but instead chose to focus on the few areas that had scratches.
2. I used a very small amount of vaseline on my finger and spread it linearly, from the centre outward to the edge, NOT in little circles, covering the areas with scratches.
3. I wiped the excess vaseline off with a lint-free towel, in the same linear fashion.

That’s it. The DVD played. Of course with time, this treatment will have to be repeated.