How to check if disc is too scratched?
 

I have a CD-ROM. It seems to have a lot of scratches on it, but how do I know if its too scratched up to be used? For instance what if you had a copy of Adobe Photoshop and you wanted to see if the entire disc was still readable/usable?

sam

Well usually the best way to tell is to either look or try running it. Failing that get a clear wax crayon (like the ones found with easter egg die kits) and rub it across the bottom of the CD. Then take a CD cleaning cloth (or any really really soft cloth for that matter) and polish the CD until you can't see the marks from the crayon any more. I'm told that is supposed to work well.

The bottom of a CDRoM is just a sheet of plastic...the data is on the underside of the top printed surface.....so long as the plastic is see-through it should work no matter what you polish it with...windolene,,,brasso,,whatever doesn't cause it to fog will work. Just don't try it on CDRW and test it on a free aol disk first.

So no measuring the "jitter" or somekind of MD5SUM or something.

nope..md5 checksum are all about the integrity of the data stream not about whether there are dirty great holes in that data.

Why make life more difficult than it needs to be? In order to run any kind of tests you have to read the thing and as it's in your CD tray just run it anyway.

Just put the CD in the tray, and if the data crashes your system or takes a long time to open, its probably too scratched.
if you look closely, and you see holes or blotted discoloration to the reflective side, you are probably dealing with scratches on the top, and therefore your CD is no good.