this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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Yup. The data was encoded on the back of the plastic disc. So long as the “label” surface wasn’t scratched you can resurface the bottom.
It was more common for commercial discs and some consumer discs to have the data layer sandwiched between the bottom surface and label layer, especially later in cd/dvd’s heyday, to prevent tiny scratches on the label or sharpie marks from destroying bits in the data layer.
There was still a wear layer below the data layer which could be resurfaced. So the services worked.
Commonly it worked by removing some material from the bottom wear layer to remove the damaged bits, so it didn't work forever. You would eventually run out of material to remove and trying to repair it would result in a catastrophic failure of the media.
Writable disks however, not so good.