Clean the drive in the computer without disassembling it. How do I erase data from a DVD to prepare it for a new burn? What to do if this does not lead to the desired result

As I wrote earlier in other articles, the biggest problem for a computer is dust. It gets hammered wherever possible in such quantities that sometimes you just wonder. The DVD optical drive is no exception.

Dust, if left uncleaned, affects the drive tray, reduces the accuracy of the laser mechanism, and affects the quality of the pressure mechanism. In general, the DVD drive should be cleaned at least once a year. Optimally - once every six months.

You will need grease, cotton swabs, and alcohol to clean and maintain your DVD drive. After removing the DVD drive from the system unit, you need to remove its front panel. The first step is to pull out the drive tray. This is done using any long and thin object (needles, paper clips, piece of wire 3 cm long).

There is a small hole on the front panel of any DVD drive (item 2 in the bottom photo). Behind it (on the inside of the panel) is a mechanism for manually opening the tray. It is necessary with a little effort to push on this mechanism through the hole and the tray will move out by 1-2 centimeters, after which it can be pulled out to the end by hand.

Next, remove the dust cover from the tray. To do this, turn the drive over and, bending the cover with your fingers, pull it down. On the lid, as a rule, there are two latches (item 1 in the bottom photo) and two guides on which the lid is held. She is removed without much effort.

Next, you need to drown the front panel latches. There are usually four of them (two on the bottom, two on the sides), or five (two on the sides, three on the bottom). After removing the front panel, the screws (4 or 5 pieces) on the bottom cover of the DVD drive are unscrewed and the cover is removed.

Then take the top cover of the DVD drive and shake it slightly. The plastic drive mechanism will fall out of the top cover (see photo below). After removing the covers, the optical disc tray itself is removed. It extends until it stops, then the latches located on the back of the tray at the corners are bent (see photo below) and the tray is removed.

All unnecessary spare parts have been removed from the DVD drive, you can start cleaning. The main body of a DVD drive has many notches, grooves and indentations. They must be thoroughly purged to remove dust accumulations. Even a small amount of it at the back wall or in the slots of the tray's path can cause the tray to stop opening (closing).

The tray is driven by a motor, which communicates with the mechanics with a rubber strap (belt). Remove the belt carefully so as not to stretch it. The mechanical operation of the drive tray depends on the condition of the belt. By the way, problems often arise with the tray after a long (more than two years) operation without maintenance. First, dust is stuffed into the guides and the tray does not get into the extreme position because of this, and then the belt is stretched due to the fact that the drive mechanism cannot open the tray due to the incorrect position of the tray.

Following the belt, remove the mechanics control board (1 or 2 latches). Care should also be taken not to damage the motor control cable from the main board. On inexpensive models, the cables may well be fragile or poorly soldered. We remove dust from the mechanics with a soft brush or air from both sides (top and bottom). Ideally, it is advisable to walk the entire DVD drive first with a brush and then blow through with air (for example, using a rubber blower, which is sold at any pharmacy).

After all the dust from the drive housing has been removed, the rubber parts are degreased with alcohol and the old grease is removed from the guides (usually by the time of maintenance there is a mixture of fine dust and dirt with a small amount of remaining grease).

In conclusion, the moving rubbing mechanical parts are lubricated with a small (scanty) amount of grease, just to form a film (no longer desirable). There should be no visible accumulation of grease.

The final touch is blowing (only with a rubber bulb) the lens of the laser mechanism (it should never be wiped clean) and the drive is assembled back.

If your dvd disc cannot be read on a computer or dvd player, then most likely the electronic media just needs to be cleaned. There are several ways to remove traces of impurities that interfere with playback, all of which require extreme care.

Instructions

To remove dust from the dvd disc, wipe it with a soft cloth made from natural materials. At the same time, direct your movement from the center of the disc to the edge along the radius, and not in the opposite order. It is not recommended to wipe the surface of the disc in a circle, since circular damage is much more difficult to get rid of.

Try blowing off the dust from the surface of the electronic media using a special spray can sold for this purpose in computer stores. Direct a stream of air from the can parallel to the surface of the disc and wait until there is no trace of dust.

To remove fingerprints from the surface of the dvd disc or any other contamination, dampen a piece of soft cloth with ethyl or isopropyl alcohol, and then wipe the electronic media dry with a radial motion.

To clean your dvd disc more thoroughly, moisten the surface with water, lather your hands and gently lather the shiny side with lather, then rinse gently with water and pat dry with a cloth that absorbs moisture easily, such as a soft terry towel. Do not dry the disc with a hairdryer, as this may damage it.

Use a glass cleaner by applying it to a soft cloth and wiping the disc surface in the direction of the radius. Or immerse the dvd media in such a solution and leave it in it for 5-7 minutes, and then wipe the disc dry with a piece of soft cloth made of natural material.

Please note that solvents such as acetone, gasoline, kerosene, and other mixtures that contain petroleum products are categorically unsuitable for cleaning discs. They can cloud the surface of the dvd disc, making the electronic media unusable. Only alcohol solvents should be used.

Tip added on February 16, 2012 Tip 2: How to clean a CD CD-ROMs are used, in particular, for long-term storage and transfer of computer files. The more actively CD-carriers are used, the more urgent the problem of periodic surface cleaning becomes. To solve it, you can use both special sets of industrial production, and improvised means. In addition, disc cleaning does not always mean their surface, sometimes it is about their contents.

Instructions

Purchase a dedicated optical disc care kit that includes the necessary components to clean the surface of your CD / DVD media. As a rule, the package contains a bottle with a special liquid and a sponge or a set of disposable wipes. In addition to them, the set may include a can, which allows, in the truest sense of this expression, to "blow off dust particles" from the tracks of the optical disc. Moreover, some kits are based on an automatic device, into which you need to fill the supplied consumables and place an optical disc, and the device will perform the cleaning procedure without your participation. The simplest of the kits contains a number of disposable wipes soaked in a special liquid.

Find a soft, lint-free cotton napkin if a special kit is not available. You can use plain water as a cleaning liquid. Glass cleaner works too.

If the kit is intended for manual cleaning of optical discs, do it with movements from the center to the edge - the likelihood of mechanical damage in a circular motion is much higher. After the end of the procedure, the CD should be dry. If you used special materials from the purchased kit, then the liquid will evaporate from the surface by itself. Otherwise, use the same radial motion to wipe the disc with a dry cotton cloth.

Use an optical disc burning application if it is not the surface of the CD that needs cleaning, but the contents of the disc. But first, you should find out if such an operation is possible in principle. A prerequisite is the presence of a CD / DVD burner in the computer. In addition, the CD itself must be reusable. If the CD has the letter W, then this condition is also met. Another possible obstacle is that if during the previous data write to the disk it was “finalized” (the corresponding mark was set in the recording settings), then no changes in its content are now possible.

If you have one of the latest operating systems installed (for example, Windows 7 or Windows Vista), use its own components to clean up the disk directory. Load the CD into the drive, launch Explorer and right-click on the optical drive icon. In the context menu, select the "Format" line and a window with disk cleanup settings will appear on the screen. It is not necessary to change anything in the default settings, click the "Start" button and the process of formatting the CD starts.

Sources of

• how to free a CD

How to clean a CD - printable version

To be able to rewrite data on a DVD, you must have a DVD writer (DVD + RW format) installed on your computer. In modern laptops and computers of the latest configuration, as a rule, such DVD-roms are already included in the equipment set.

DVDs come in two flavors - rewritable (RW) and non-rewritable (R). In the first case, you can use the drive several times, deleting and again writing new data to it, in the second option, you can write information to the disk only once. In our case, we need a DVD RW. Before writing new information to a disc with data already on it, you must delete the old data (format the disc). This can be done using special software, or by your own means of the operating system installed on the computer.

How to delete information from a disc - DVD + RW or CD + RW

If your computer is running Windows XP or earlier versions of the Windows operating system, it is best to use special programs to format the DVDs. For example, which is one of the most popular among PC users. It allows you not only to clean the disk from old information, but also to write new data to it. The program is especially popular, since, in addition to stable operation, it also has a very convenient and intuitive interface.

You can download the installation file of the Nero program for free on the Internet, and then install it on your PC, following the instructions of the installer step by step. After that, it is best to restart your computer, then insert the desired disc into the DVD drive and use the shortcut on the desktop to start Nero Start Smart.

In the main menu of the program window that opens, find the "Advanced" function, click on it with the mouse button. In response to this, a dialog box will open in which you must click on "Erase DVD", thus activating the "Wizard of the program". The wizard will display hints on the screen, using which you can clean the disk of unnecessary information. After the disk has been successfully formatted, a notification will appear on the monitor screen.

Use built-in programs to clean your disks

Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems have an intuitive and stable built-in DVD formatting capability. After the system independently detects the disk installed in the drive, a dialog box will appear on the monitor screen, in which you need to click on the "Write files to disk" function. In the new window that opens, you need to select the name of the disk, then click on "Show formatting options" to set the parameters for future recording to the disk. If the new information will consist of files of the same type (for example, movies or music), then it is necessary to select the Mastered parameter so that the disc will be readable by the equipment that reproduces these files in the future. For collecting files of different types on one disk, it is better to choose LFS. After specifying the required parameter, click on the "Next" button. In response to this, the formatting process will automatically start, after which a corresponding message will appear on the monitor screen.

Useful video

Especially for you, we have prepared a video on how you can clear data from a CD / DVD disc:

Although DVDs are out of date, they are still on many computers and laptops. Many have a Windows licensed system that is stored on disk and requires a DVD drive (although it can be installed from it). Therefore, I want to consider in this article how you can yourself, using simple tools, clean a DVD drive in your computer or laptop.

I have been using the method described below for many years and has proven to be very effective.

The reason that the DVD drive began to work poorly, not to read discs, or to do it intermittently is most often due to the ingress of dust on the laser lens. Here we are going to clean it.

Required tools:

• Philips screwdriver (cross);
• A regular paper clip (you need to unbend it);
• Cotton swab or stick.

Tools

How to clean a computer DVD drive

First, we remove the DVD drive from the computer. This is not required on a laptop.

Turn it upside down and unscrew the 4 screws that secure the cover.

We unscrew the screws

Remove the lid very carefully and set it aside. Our attention will be presented a board with electronic components.

Bottom of DVD-ROM

Now we put the drive so that it looks with the front panel at us. We insert our unbent paperclip into a small hole designed for emergency opening of the drive tray. Feel free to press on the paper clip until the tray comes out of its place a little.

We press here with a paper clip

We manually take out the tray to about half of its length. Now remove the front plastic panel. To do this, press the side latches with a screwdriver.

Side bezel latches

Removing the panel

Now we turn the drive upside down and carefully remove it from there.

Removing the DVD drive from the cover

You should now be able to see the very laser lens that needs to be cleaned. Consider it carefully. Most likely you will find fine hairs or dust on it.

Do not try to pick up dirt with your hands. Greasy stains may remain and may be difficult to remove.

We take a cotton swab and lightly brush away the dirt from the lens. No need to polish the lens, just remove dust and hair.

We clean the lens with a cotton swab

How to clean a DVD disc

Computers are an integral part of our work, everyday life, and leisure. However, with this widespread use and distribution of computer technology, ordinary users have certain difficulties with its operation. In particular, when it comes to working with disks. Not everyone can figure out how to clear a DVD disc of the existing recording so that you can make a new recording. And it's not as easy as it sounds. To make this task as simple as possible, it is best to use a dedicated program. and how to do it literally in one click will tell and make a special application for burning CDs, DVDs and Blu Ray discs - "Disc Studio".
How it works? Everything is elementary! Now you don't need to be a big computer professional to complete this task. Actually, like a number of others, now the problem will be neither the question of how to clean the DVD disc, nor how to make a new recording on it - music or video.

So, erasing the media is a separate function in the program: select the desired drive with the disc and click the "Erase Disk" button. You can now overwrite and clear again an infinite number of times if necessary.

Even more - the program opens up a whole range of new possibilities: creating a beautiful design for your disc. For example, if you are compiling a home archive or preparing promotional materials for a presentation, handouts. You can choose a disk image or use graphics. Everything that may be necessary and everything that can come to mind is now easy, accessible and simple!

An important nuance is that working with the "Disk Studio" program, which can be downloaded, helps to save all valuable data from loss or unintentional destruction.

"Diskov Studio" is a good solution for those who want not only to simplify their communication with technology as much as possible, but also it is banal to "keep the brand" in everything. Order in their own archives and easy work will be ensured.