Cleaning CD/DVD Rom Drives

[Musicman51]

I have been told conflicting methods of cleaning my cd/dvd rom drives. I was wondering if possibly someone could shine some light on this topic. For instance, i purchase these cleaner cd disc for a buck a piece at the dollar store {philips and maxell}. And i shoot a blast of canned air in there to clean any other dirt paricles out. My local computer guy says thats the worst thing i could do to my drives. Seems like somethings missing buying a dollar cleaner CD for a $140.00 drive how do you clean yours???

[ddouglass]

First thing is if those cleaner discs were bought in Best Buy or other electronics stores they would be $10 or more. Dollar stores buy close outs stock from other stores going out of business for pennies, which is why they can sell for a dollar.
By blowing compressed air into a drive you risk two things. Blowing dust into areas which move and causing problems with motion. And damaging the laser by moving it from its precise position on the arm.
The discs are your best bet though they are not all that effective.
Most of the time it is more a dirty or damaged disc that will cause problems and less of a drive problem. By this I am referring to the read function.
As far as the write function goes it is usually the laser that will cause the problem but it isn't normally a dust problem. Unfortunately the more you use it the faster the laser wears out. When you burn discs the laser is at its highest intensity to be able to "burn" the information to the disc. This high intensity burns the laser out faster than using the drive for read. Thus the more you burn the faster the drive goes out.

[Roy Dennis]

I just use a Memorex laser lens cleaning disk. The only time I use it is if I start to get a problem, If my player is working OK, I leave it alone. So I probably only use it once of twice a Year. Like they say, If it ain't broke leave it alone.

Roy.

[Musicman51]

See it's great to get help from the pros like you guys. You know i am new to this computer stuff. A few years ago i couldn't even program my VCR. But anyway...Just to show you how misinformation gets around. Look at this link on cleaning a CD drive. Look at the 5th picture over where it says "Clean CD Drive"..see what he's holding in his hand, and doing? This is why i asked. There is so much bad info out there. Thanks guys for helping me again. George
http://www.computerdust.com/clean_co...rom_drive.html

[ddouglass]

He does say not to use too much pressure. How much is too much???

[billyo]

we used canned compressed air at work all the time, the trick to this is not to shake the can, and just pull the trigger once , not continous caused this will freeze up all the moving parts inside ( i mean real frozen ) and you have to be around 6-8" away, dont stick the nozzle in the compartment, if your too close this will blow too much air preasure ,this will make the dust circulate inside, i have done this to all my laptops/pc and the cd/dvd drives still works great..

[George]

I use air with short blasts because of the freezing factor.

I had a Plextor tech tell me over the phone a couple of years ago to never use anything that touches the lased head, and that made sense to me.