A lot of stores would abuse the machine and use it till it pretty much would require a service over a short period, maintaining it over a long period and the machine would last longer. To save money or time they would also not change the supplies just reset it giving you a poor cleaning service. When satisfied with the cleanliness of the CD, gently dry it with a clean, soft cloth.In terms of high street disc cleaning 1 disc is around £2-3, and you can usually get a deal for 3 discs for £5, but quality varies as those not technical would not maintain or service their machines or select the adequate mode for cleaning. Hold the CD under your sink with running water and gently rub the tooth paste off. Once finished, let the toothpaste dry to the touch.
If the CD is badly scratched, you may want to rub the toothpaste around the radius of the circle several times. Work your way around the CD using this motion until the CD is completely covered with a thin layer of the toothpaste.
Squeeze a smidgen of paste on the CD and rub it in using a straight sweeping motion with your finger from the center radius of the CD to the outside. All you want is a good old fashioned white toothpaste. I personally like Tom's of Maine Natural Toothpaste as it contains a basic enamel polish, without all the fancy gels, swirls, glitter, and bubble gum flavors. Start with the most simple toothpaste you can find. It can offer your CDs the same service, albeit not to quite the extend as the polish, but if the scratches are not too bad, it may just do the job. Toothpaste is designed much the same way as a rubbing compound, in that it is manufactured with a gritty substance, which gently scratches the enamel on the teeth, to clean and polish them. But what if you need to fix a CD right away and don't want to travel out to your nearest store to grab a bottle of polish, in such a case, toothpaste works reasonably well too. I have found that circular polishing works just as well as radius polishing, but you can follow whatever advice you like, as this is simply a matter of opinion and personal experience.
But this is only if you put enough elbow grease into it. It does this by starting out with a heavy grit, which breaks down over the polishing course into finer and finer grit, until it eventually leaves a mirror polished surface. When I refer to letting the rubbing compound breakdown, I am saying the rubbing compound formula essentially contains a grit that is designed to scratch the surface you are polishing, and wear down the deeper scratches until they are closer to the same height as the rest of the CD. So, if you are willing to let the rubbing compound breakdown to its final stages, circle polishing can work well too.
While this is good advice for the most part, since small circular scratches have been known to throw off the laser tracking system of a player, most tracking systems today are far superior to the ones we remember from the 90's. The experts tell you to always polish in a straight line from the radius of the center to the outside, rather than polish in circles. Admittedly, 3M polish is not necessarily a green product, it is after all synthetic in its basic composition, but you will need only a dab and quite frankly, there is no natural product that will even come close to the power of this stuff when it comes to resurfacing a badly scratched CD. I prefer the good old standby of automotive grade rubbing compound, such as from 3M.