Is there any way to get any type of info off of a scratched (scratched beyond scratched) cd?

[Nerd]

Does anyone even the Feds have access to tools that can read SCRATCHED up cd's?

 

[Wallydraigle]

Is buffing it out an option or is it worse than that?

 

[palad]

If the data layer is scratched, I suppose the best anybody could do would be to try to recreate it. If it is only the coating that is scratched, I would imagine some very careful buffing would make it readable, at least once.

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Someone posted a technique once for using toothpaste to recover a scratched CD, but I don't recall the exact process.

 

[IcemanJer]

you may need on of those solutions that can fill in scratches.. I know they have it for film (photographic negatives), so I'd imagine there would be something similar for CDs since essentially they're both plastic

 

[IcemanJer]

whoa, palad, that's gotta be some mad scratching to get into the data layer

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Here are the references, but someone tried the toothpaste without good results.

http://forums4.anandtech.com/arcmessageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=306198
http://forums4.anandtech.com/arcmessageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=268191