Reading damaged discs

[Jensvde]

Hi,

I have a lot of discs that are damaged.

Imgburn just won't read them. I have set Imgburn to automatically ignore read errors, but that doesn't help. I left my computer on for the night and the next day only 2% of the disc was read out.

What is the fastest way to read these discs?



Jens


Edit: Imgburn says:

Code: Select all

W 23:30:21 Retry Failed - Reason: L-EC Uncorrectable Error

and Interpretation: Check Condition

[DiskingRound]

As IMGBurn says, Check the Condition. Are they scratched? Or cracked? If it is scratched, take a look at what is under your kitchen sink. People have reported success with various materials like toothpaste, furniture polish, and even saliva. If it is cracked or the label side is scratched then don't hold any hopes for getting data off the disc, the best thing you can do is toss it.

[Knuckx]

If the disc is cracked or delaminated, do not hold any hope for getting any data off the disc.

Without doing anything physical to the discs, the fastest method using imgburn is:
A low (0-2) number of software retries,
A low (0-2) number of hardware retries,
Ignore read errors set.

If you want to try and do something physical to the discs, a plastic polish like Xerapol is the way to go for bad scratches.

[GoCheckINC]

I've had some success with CD Recovery toolbox. A game wouldn't install and trying to copy n paste gave me some crylic data error, Toolbox worked for that, for beyond damaged discs it won't work.

[TheRetroPirate]

Try different drives, some drives can read bad discs where others can not.

Also you could try a program like IsoPuzzle in combination with different drives.

[mrpijey]

Try also to read the discs at the lowest speed possible, it may help against some types of read errors.

[DiskingRound]

Another tip: Look for so-called "CD rot" in the inner or outer edge the disc. If you can see clear, or black scratches dig in to the center or out to the edge, then you probably have a case of disc rot.
Rotten discs are damaged beyond repair; this results in physical damage to the reflective layer. For more information, read here: http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/R ... amaged_CDs
I have a few music discs affected by this problem. If you want, I can show scans of them but it will take some time.