Whats a good way to clean this hardware without taking it apart? Are DVD Laser cleaners reliable or would a blast of compressed air into the drive help as well?
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Whats a good way to clean this hardware without taking it apart? Are DVD Laser cleaners reliable or would a blast of compressed air into the drive help as well?
cleaning discs are your only option if you're not willing to take it apart.
(compressed air isn't very effective)
cleaning discs will not clean the entire objective lense [due to it's curvature].
cleaning by hand(after disassembly of course), is the best method.
my .02¢
I use both. First I blast a shot into the drive in a direction I know will not go directly to the lense to get any heavy stuff out and then run a lens cleaning disk. As far as I have heard cleaning the lens by hand is a no no. Supposedly its a very soft material and can be scratched even with a cloth. For this reason disk type cleaners do not touch the lense but pass closely creating a static charge that picks up the dust particles as well as a little wind on the way around.
If I get an old computer that is full of dust, I take the cover off the drive since most times its just loaded with dust and hair. The cooling fans in any computer draw air in from anywhere it will flow, and often are the culprit that fills a drive with dust. For this reason I like to have slightly more air going into the PC than blowing out. This way any dust that gets into the drives comes from inside, all my fans are filtered and I keep the inside clean as a whistle.