Ok, this sounds ridiculous, and I don’t know why this works, but it did for me.
Last weekend I was playing Gears of War (again) when I started encountering the scratched parts of the disc. Usually, an error message pops up for the XBox 360 saying “disc read error, clean it and try again”, and then it promptly resets the system…doh!
I cleaned the disc. It didn’t work. The disc read error always occurred at the same spot, as Fenix is cautiously wandering through a narrow hall in the building. I managed to cheese the system a couple of times by having him dash through the hall. I imagined I bypassed the scratched portion quickly so it didn’t have to read it. Haha, my logic humors me =)
But then I encountered a place I couldn’t “run” past. It involved a huge gunfight in the middle of town, and there was no specific spot I could avoid to prevent the console from rebooting. Cleaning it again did not help. Finally, I remembered my friend showing me this video involving a banana and a scratched CD.
I admit, I was skeptical. The video claims the banana fixes the scratched CDs, and when I did it, I forgot to use the cloth after the banana peel (to help rub banana matter into the CD). Instead I went straight to the glass cleaner to clean up. When I was finished, the scratches were there, but one of the marks looked smaller.
Nevertheless, it worked when I started playing! I was able to fight through the town and continue with the game. I was very stoked!
Does anybody know why it works? Somehow I’m imagining small particles of banana getting embedded into the cracks. Obviously, the laser can’t read banana….but I’m guessing some data-loss from the scratches is recoverable. Perhaps it’s the marks themselves that hinder the laser reader? This just boggles my mind!
5 Comments
You’re a gamer, and you’re telling me you never knew that Bananas contain the essence of all things video game? (notice I capitalize Banana…it’s because it’s ultimate…like God or Fruit Snacks)
Never tried this, but I’ll have to remember that for a later time. Thanks for the informative…uh…information.
“I am a baNAna!”
my spooon is too big.
uh.. btw, if anyone’s wondering. bananas don’t work well on scratched glasses. i found that out the hard way! lol
hey, i just came across your site and found this old(er) entry.
I’d just like to point out that on most cd/dvds, the data is burned slowly, meaning that it is deeper into the disc (closer to the label, instead of the ‘data side’ (discs burned at faster speeds burn closer to the surface of the data side, thus are more affected by scratches).
You’re partially right about filling in with ‘banana matter’ - but the bigger thing here is that in rubbing the peel you’re causing friction to occur, and the banana peel will naturally slide easily across the disc without causing more scratching, allowing the friction to head up the plastic of the disc and melt in a bit over the scratch. Since this fills in the scratch, the laser will not be randomly bounced around and thus will be able to read the data contained under the scratch.
I hope this makes sense to you.
There are also some good products out there for disc repair that rely on a liquid spray with a rubber/foam pad that rubs along the surface of the disc (i bought a knock-off name one for 5.99 6 years ago from www.futureshop.ca and it still works amazingly!).
Wow, thanks Ryan for such a scientific explanation!