Read from a damaged CD

Hi, I tried to search here and there, but I didn't find a good answer.

I bought my first CD-RW in 1999 (it was a 2x2x6 drive). I started to back up a lot of CDs to MP3 discs.

A lot of time has passed and I wanted to read from some of those discs (and the idea of copying them on DVD+R). The good brand CDs played fine (verbatim, tdk, and so on), while some discs make lots of problems.

They become completely invisible to any CD-DVD drive.

It's like the pickup can't read the TOC of the disc (but when I burnt them I always checked if they work). I have no hope. I tried any friend's CD or DVD drive but in everyone the disc is spinned fast and slow (makes lot of noise) and at the end it freezes the system (I have to eject to make windows work again).

What shall I do?
Does it exist a low level program that bypass the Windows drivers, and try to copy exactly the disc (at least some data)?

Thanks

Trying with BlindRead ... it seems to work, let's hope!

I think that the trouble is due of Windows CD autostart (the program that tries to read the content and tell you what to do (open folder, open Media Player, and so on).

What I'm betting happened is that the cheaper CD-RWs deteriorated with time, which explains why they worked initially.  In which case there's nothing really that can be done.  But I'm just guessing, I might be wrong.

try isobuster. it's out on the web for download

You might also try Drive Speed if you have it.  It limits the max speed of the drive so you might get a better read.  I know drive auto slow down when they can't read but Drive Speed helps anyway for reading marginal disks.  You might also try cleaning the disks.

Well, cleaning the disc is the first thing I tried

Ok, I'll try Isobuster. Yesterday I left Blindwrite for 3 hours, but it was stuck to a damaged sector and it didn't unlock until I ejected the Cd.

Hello, symonjfox

unfortunately, I greatly fear there is no solution for us... But I would be much more greatly relieved if you find out one.

I had a little success with Isobuster. With that program I could read the TOC and see exactly what files are contained in the disc.

I could also extract nearly half disc successfully (as files, not iso image) but, having the titles of the damaged part, I can recover them elsewhere.

Download CDCheck - it's free for personal use and will copy damaged files on HD well.

I tried ISObuster on a disc that has trouble reading at the end of the disc, last 10% of a full DVD. ISObuster hit the error and told to ignore all errors. It chugged along for a long time (hour or so) and moved about 2%. I cancelled it. Can it take hours to get thru a small part of the disc? I thought it might be wearing the drive out so I quit before doing any damage.

Unfortunately it is so. If your damaged disc is just 1 file (avi for example) there's no hope, if it's a compilation of files (like my mp3s) I was able to recover half disc successfully, and, watching the TOC, I know what are the damaged files, so I can to recover them elsewhere.

I tried CDCheck, but it doesn't block Windows' autorun, so it freezes until I eject the CD (while Isobuster and BlindRead block any autorun settings).

Unfortunately it is so. If your damaged disc is just 1 file (avi for example) there's no hope,

That's what I figured. It is a single, 300mb VOB file, the last one which is written at the outer edge of the disc and the place where DVDs seem to go bad most often. This was my last hope. At least on this one, the movie does play until it hits the credits then locks up.

Originally posted by symonjfox
Hi, I tried to search here and there, but I didn't find a good answer.

I bought my first CD-RW in 1999 (it was a 2x2x6 drive). I started to back up a lot of CDs to MP3 discs.

A lot of time has passed and I wanted to read from some of those discs (and the idea of copying them on DVD+R). The good brand CDs played fine (verbatim, tdk, and so on), while some discs make lots of problems.

They become completely invisible to any CD-DVD drive.

It's like the pickup can't read the TOC of the disc (but when I burnt them I always checked if they work). I have no hope. I tried any friend's CD or DVD drive but in everyone the disc is spinned fast and slow (makes lot of noise) and at the end it freezes the system (I have to eject to make windows work again).

What shall I do?
Does it exist a low level program that bypass the Windows drivers, and try to copy exactly the disc (at least some data)?

Thanks

What kind of drive are you trying to read them back on?  Have you tried other brands?  I had some discs that would not read back on various oem cd drives (btc, aopen, etc), but a Lite-On LTD-163 or LTD-166 dvd drive can read them no problem.  If you have access to any LiteOn drive (burner, dvd, etc) give that a try they've not failed me yet.