I once had a CD that I really needed to make a backup of, but it was scratched to hell and truly unreadable. I put it in a pot of boiling water for a few minute

I once had a CD that I really needed to make a backup of, but it was scratched to hell and truly unreadable. I put it in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes, and presto: the CD was readable for a while, letting me back up the files. It'd cool off and become unreadable again, but I'd just put it back on the stove and repeat until I had all of the data.