Recovering broken/scratched CDs...

[NoteMe]

ANyone ever made an atempt? I have had digitial cameras for about 5 years now, and my oldest CDs are not working as they used to. I thought I had lost 11 pictures for good now. But I found a great app that is more or less getting them back as they where new. There is some errors in some of the images, but at least it is getting them back. The app I used is this one:


http://www.smart-projects.net/


Anyone want to share some other apps they have used that works, so I can maybe test them too?


ØØ

[dglienna]

copy the CD to a hard disk, and try to read it from there.

[NoteMe]

The problem is that Explorer won't read some of the files on the CD... It just stops, and won't copy it at all.


The first app worked ok.


The second app I tested worked just about the same, maybe a bit worse, and they whre charging for it.....but I only tested the trial. It was called CD Data Rescue.



ØØ

[DaveBo]

If a CD is literally broken, e.g. has a crack in it, don't put it into a drive unless the drive is expendable, even then - stand back!

My daughter put a cracked CD in her drive and it exploded. We removed drive, CD and all and just trashed it. Can you say "a million pieces"?

For scratched CDs there are ways to buff these out.
If the scratches are deep, I believe many music/rental stores have machines now to re-face them, i.e. grind & polish.

[NoteMe]

Yeah, we have those machines at work too, but this is scratches that makes the CD-ROM not readint the file at all in Explorer. I am gettin really good results now using the first app I mentioned and then CDRoller, and then PSP to compine the good parts of the picture from both of them. Will have some sample pics up when I am ready.



ØØ

[applescript]

What I have always found interesting is that the scrathes on the top of the CD hurt the data more than those on the bottom, or so I have heard.

[NoteMe]

Depends on what kind of CD it is. CDs you buy have a thin layer where it is burned, so they don't get hurt by scratches on the side they are burned so easily. CD-Rs and CD-RW doesn't have this layer, so they hurt more on this side then the other one.



ØØ

[Tom_Sample_UK]

It doesnt say how much the minimum donation has to be?

[Tom_Sample_UK]

To expensive

[wossname]

Have you seen those weird repair gadgets that have a hanle that you turn and a liquid plastic that you pour into a little hole?

I have often wondered if they worked and are not just £30 worth of crap.

[NoteMe]

I have seen them, but I don't belive in them. I guess they will only make a scratched CD that is not able to be red at all by a CD-ROM to be read, but the content of the CD where the scratch will still be lost (or even more lost then it ever has been).


But I havn't tried it though...and won't do it anyway...

[NoteMe]

Samples from the diffrent apps:

These two images are the same picture, from the same CD. The picture could not be read at all by Explorer, nor any other image editing app I had on my PC:

App1:





App2:







PS: Not ALL the images wanted to be repared that nicely, some still have a few to some lines that is broken as the first image has.



ØØ

[JPicasso]

I've used a kit by memorex or something like that,
it came with a handful of stinky wet-naps that you wipe around the CD surface..
it's supposed to kinda melt the CD plastic and smooth over the scratches.

I restored two game CDs that had been rendered useless by a CD drive that would continually scratch them during use.

Cracked CDs are garbage.


Another question you might ask is "Are these pictures worth the effort?"

[NoteMe]

That was just a picture of my Xes room...you should see the rest when I turned around the camera and she is her bed...


ØØ