Remove the disc 'biscuit' from the plastic shell or jacket and wash it in warm soapy water. Rinse it and dry it out.
If that doesn't get them clean, try isopropanol.
Then transplant the disc into a new shell or jacket.
Use a good drive (Teac counts), clean the heads first, and read the disc in one shot -- you may well only get one try. Ideally use a Discferret, Catweasel or similar flux-level reader.
This assumes they're not Wabash or some similarly junky brand. For those, you'll need a sacrifice to the data gods and a whole heap of luck... not to mention a box of foam swabs and isopropanol to clean the disk drive up afterwards...
If you see bits of magnetic material flaking off the disc, don't even waste your time trying it. It's toast and will just end up fouling the heads on the drive.
In theory hard-drive-style non-contact reading is possible, but I'm not aware of anyone who's actually done it.
Remove the disc 'biscuit' from the plastic shell or jacket and wash it in warm soapy water. Rinse it and dry it out.
If that doesn't get them clean, try isopropanol.
Then transplant the disc into a new shell or jacket.
Use a good drive (Teac counts), clean the heads first, and read the disc in one shot -- you may well only get one try. Ideally use a Discferret, Catweasel or similar flux-level reader.
This assumes they're not Wabash or some similarly junky brand. For those, you'll need a sacrifice to the data gods and a whole heap of luck... not to mention a box of foam swabs and isopropanol to clean the disk drive up afterwards...
If you see bits of magnetic material flaking off the disc, don't even waste your time trying it. It's toast and will just end up fouling the heads on the drive.
In theory hard-drive-style non-contact reading is possible, but I'm not aware of anyone who's actually done it.