Here are a few simple ideas which I have found to be very helpful in providing the best possible protection for your treasures.
Don’t use the cases they came in.
You can provide much better protection and prevent damage when removing or placing the disks in the cases by using a Disk Wallet to store your disks. Disk wallets come in various sizes and capacity (so you’ll find one which will hold your entire set in one case) and are designed to be soft and non-damaging to your disks when placing or removing them from the sleeves; This prevents surface scratching and pressure points encountered from the normal hard plastic center clip cases most DVD sets come in, the inside sleeve material will also help to keep the disk clean.
If you have the full season set, your disks will be loose in the box with no protection at all, so they are in even more need of a good DVD wallet.
You can of coarse print off a nice label to glue or tape on the end of the wallet to give it a nice finish for your book shelf.
Don’t put the disk down on any surface
One of the worst things we can do is leave the disk lying around. Even just putting it down for a moment is enough to scratch the surface with bits of dust or other surface debris. While these may be very small scratches at first, over time the number of scratches will build up and where they over lap become deeper, which will result in reading errors while you’re trying to watch the disc.
The best policy is to always move the disk from its case to the DVD player and straight back into the case when you’re finished with it. Never put it down even for a moment.
Handle the disk by the edges only
It’s much better to avoid fingerprints on your disk rather than undertaking the risky business of wiping them off and almost certainly leaving a scratch or mark of some kind in its place. You can do this simply by holding the disk with a finger or hand against either side of the disk. An alternative is to use a finger in the center hole of the disk. Although if done incorrectly or with too much force this can put undue pressure on the disk, which over time could result in pressure marks or splits, so holding by the sides is the best way to handle a disk
Use a proper disk cleaner
Only ever use a proper “circular motion disc cleaner” to clean a disk. These cheap little devices are designed as a home version of the professional cleaners used in rental stores. They use a special spray and circular cleaning device to safely remove dirt and repair minor surface scratches on the disk. My one has fixed many a rented movie as well as saved a few of my own disks and I highly recommend them.
Don’t store your disks in direct sun light
Even though some disk wallets are designed to protect disks from sun damage, the temperature inside a wallet will still increase dramatically if the sun is shining directly on the case. That kind of temperature change from cool to hot and back to cool, can place a disk under damaging stress as the plastic expands and contracts with the temperature changes. Over time this expansion-contraction process can cause a disk to warp and/or damage the track information stored on the disk surface rendering it useless.
