Optical Drive Cleaning

Thinking about the fact that I had not cleaned my optical drives in a very long time, I used one of those disks with a couple of brushes attached, to clean my DVD drives. I can't be certain, but I think that it improved the read speed while encoding some video by 3-5 fps, and perhaps stabilized the speed somewhat.

That is as much as I have ever done, but being a smoker, and knowing the sticky nature of nicotine smoke, I would bet that the brushing didn't remove that. I read a couple of web pages, where it recommended using canned air to blast in the tray slot, but I tend to feel that might just blow the dust around, and still not remove the nicotine. Another metioned using a Q-Tip moistened with isopropyl alcohol, directly on the lens of laptop drives, because the lens is attached to the tray, thus exposed when the tray is open, but that is not true of an internal desktop drive.

Therefore, I'm wondering how advisable it would be to use that alcohol to moisten the little brushes on the cleaner disk for that purpose? Obviously, it couldn't be much, otherwise it would be slung around inside the drive, and likely would dry very quickly. I'm not sure if it would really make the lens cleaner, or just smear the nicotine around.

I'm hoping that someone that smokes and has tried something like this will respond, rather than others with no real experience.

I do not smoke and hence do not qualify for a suggestion but ranting - I never stop.

1. Do not smoke in front of the computer.:)

2. Just use a fine micro-fibre cloth and give some gentle wipes to the lense.( I would avoid any cleaning liquids)

I also have read that cleaning disks with minute holes that blow air on to the lense due to the centrifugal force of the spinning disks are available and is a better one than the brushes.

But in your case, a gentle wipe is perhaps called for.:)

Ignoring the rant, it is not possible to reach the lens with a micro-fibre cloth, or any thing of that sort, without disassembling the drive, which I'm not going to do, since it is an internal drive. I have not seen a cleaning disk with the holes that you speak of, do you know where to find them?

A Guy said:

I'd say stay away from cleaning the lens manually. The pickup uses a very fine focus assy, which physically moves the lens part up and down. It's going to be very fragile. Leave it be IMHO. A Guy

Does that include using a cleaning disk? I have done that a number of times before, without any apparent problems. This is what my OP was about in the first place, only adding alcohol, in some fashion.

ickymay said:

I used to service optical drives and the most effective cleaner was saliva

I am of course not suggesting you lick it

Yes, but I bet that when you serviced a drive, it involved a bit of disassembly to expose the lens, and you could wipe the spit off. I doubt that spit on a cleaning disk would work the same. Besides, the result would probably vary depending on what you just ate or drank.

EDIT: Is that how you got your username?