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  1. #1
    RetroSteve! My location

    Stephen Coates's Avatar
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    Knackered DVD-Rs

    Is there any hope of recovering any data off DVDs which appear to be completely knackered?

    I've just been going through some old disks to try and back up the data on them. Non are hugely important, but I'd rather not loose anything if possible. I have a DVD-R which no drive will accept. One drive spits it out, so I dug out the £600* DVD-RW drive which made the disk in the first place, 11 years ago, and that refuses to read it as well.

    I did try the disk out in 2006/2007 and only some of the data was readable back then. I guess I should have tried to recover most of the data back then. Fortunately, I did save some of the data back then, but not all of it.

    RetroSteve

    *http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/26/pioneer_dvra03/

  2. #2
    Retro Addict Administrator
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    Burger Time Champion, Sonic Champion Harrison's Avatar
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    Is it due to actual surface damage of the discs, or is it just that the discs have become unreadable?

    They can become unreadable on their own due to dye degradation, especially discs that used an organic dye layer because this can break down due to daylight. And a cheap disc's dye layer can just break down due to age, even just 5 years after being written.

    With surface damage you can sometimes clean up the disc surface enough, but not always. With dye degradation it's a bit harder. Are you getting cyclic redundancy errors when trying to read the discs? Or other types of error? Data recovery software can sometimes reconstruct some of it.

    Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


  3. #3
    RetroSteve! My location

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    It has some minor scuffs, but nothing bad, so I'm expecting the dye has seen better days.

    Not surprising to be honest, given that the disc is about 11 years old.

    I don't get any errors. The disc just won't mount, and so all the recovery methods I've tried don't seem to touch it.

  4. #4
    ELITE Kin Hell's Avatar
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    You might have to give up entirely. I had loads of Rietek Dye DVD's that zer0'd themselves in less than five years. Very unacceptable for Branded disc's....

    http://www.ritek.com/p2-pro1-M-DISC.asp

    They are now claiming 1000 years on their M Disc's.
    Getting 0ld0r is mandatory - Growing up is just an option.

  5. #5
    Retro Addict Administrator
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    Burger Time Champion, Sonic Champion Harrison's Avatar
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    Ritek were good years ago at the very beginning.. but you had to obtain discs with the right dye. The problem with most branded discs if that they are just that, branded discs. All media worldwide is made by a handful of manufacturers, then sold to the sellers whom print their branded labels onto the top of them.

    With Ritek their original Red discs were great, but then they sourced media from somewhere else and you started to see 20+ coasters from a 100 cake pack. Then there were the Ritek R04s which were great until they switch dye manufacturers to India. They were really bad after that.

    Their Grey's were great for DVD player compatibility but I doubt lasted that many years, and the Yellows were good for games consoles.

    However most of these all used organic dye so will fail at some point.

    The only discs that will last are those using a metal based dye layer, and these are mainly ASO+ metal dye based Verbatim media. I've never had coasters with these, and every disc I've ever written still works. You just have to make sure they are a batch made in Japan or Singapore, and not India. India made ones can delaminate.

    Some other makes like Sony, TDK, Mitsubishi, Panasonic have been good.. but you do have to buy some and see what dye they are using to know for sure. Kodak used to make amazing CD media for archival that contained a metal layer containing gold. Those could be read in any drive and all mine still work. Panasonic also make a gold based dye in archival DVDs and these were great too.

    Buy on the whole I just buy Verbatim and nothing else.

    I know a lot about blank media mainly because years ago one of the roles in a design agency I worked for was disc replication and ordering of media. Once we had completed a project I then had to source the media to burn it for distribution. I used to have a main contract with one of the main media distributors in the UK. And if we needed a large project replication they would create a glass master for use to get them pressed.

    Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

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  6. #6
    RetroSteve! My location

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    I'm not getting my hopes up for this one, but I'll try it in some other drives just to be on the safe side.

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    ELITE Kin Hell's Avatar
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    @ SC

    Love to keep them crossed for you & gl.

    @ Harrison

    Yeah. Kodak Gold were awesome discs in their day. I have some *cough* back-up PS1 games on them & they still work flawlessly.
    Getting 0ld0r is mandatory - Growing up is just an option.

  8. #8
    Retro Addict Administrator
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    Best drives for reading dodgy discs has always been LiteOn. They seem to read many that other drives don't even recognise. NEC were always very good too.

    Worst were Pioneer. They wrote some of the cleanest disc copies but were never great at reading discs.

    At the moment I'm a fan of Sony Optiarc (NECs legacy) drives.

    If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!


  9. #9
    RetroSteve! My location

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    I keep pondering buying some new optical drives. I haven't bothered though as I don't use them a lot. Currently, I have an old Pioneer one which came out of a PowerMac G5, the aforementioned very old Pioneer one, and the Lite-on CD-RW drive that Harrison sent to me about 7 years ago .

  10. #10
    ELITE Kin Hell's Avatar
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    Plextor are also very good devices.
    Getting 0ld0r is mandatory - Growing up is just an option.

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