It's really not OT this time because it's a CD with some of my oldest Poser backups. I just tried to pop it in to find something for the 10 year thread.. and my Windows Explorer just dies on it, as does TotalCommander...

And now I'm scared of even TRYING to put in any other of my oldest back up disks.. I can't bear the thought that they may also be corrupted...

This one is a little scratched  (yea I know, bad thing and honestly I don't know HOW it has become scratched, it's always been kept in its pouch in one of the "book like" CD boxes) so it MAY be why. I polished it lightly with a soft cloth to make sure there weren't any greasy fingerprints messing it up.. but it still won't be read >_< GAH!

So.. is there any program that may help reading old, possibly corrupted disks? Preferably cheap...  (yea I know, I'm pushing it...)

I don't know of any programs that will do that, but I know there are data recovery services that can probably extract your files.  They are very expensive.

try this

smear toothpaste over the blank (recorded) side of the Disk. gently wash off, rubbing from the center to the edge.

dry with an old t-shirt (soft cloth) then try the disk.

I've used this a lot with great success.

Sometimes ... just sometimes ... rubbing the surface of a CD in trouble with the inside of a banana skin (to fill in tiny hairline scratches) and then wiping the surface gently with a lint free cloth
can ... sometimes ... just sometimes ...  restore the readability of the CD.

You didn't use CD=R/W disks ......................................... did you? :scared:

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Quote - try this

smear toothpaste over the blank (recorded) side of the Disk. gently wash off, rubbing from the center to the edge.

dry with an old t-shirt (soft cloth) then try the disk.

I've used this a lot with great success.

Please NOTE -

Some toothpastes may contain abrasive polishing agents that MAY do more harm than good.

Just a thought.

cheers, (anyway)
dr geep
;=]

erm Geep... thats the point.

Quote - > Quote - try this

smear toothpaste over the blank (recorded) side of the Disk. gently wash off, rubbing from the center to the edge.

dry with an old t-shirt (soft cloth) then try the disk.

I've used this a lot with great success.

Please NOTE -

Some toothpastes may contain abrasive polishing agents that MAY do more harm than good.

Just a thought.

cheers, (anyway)
dr geep
;=]

erm MagnusGreel , please note the above BOLD print..

We are trying to REMOVE the scratches ... not make more of them, no? :huh:

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

look.

the point is IT HAS ABRASIVES you use to clean the surface.

thats the POINT.

now you have a problem with that?

and yes I have a problem with that. how about you don't correct me in future? it'll be less yelling.

abrasives polish.

how about you just leave it since you don't know what your talking about here?

Oops, sorry, my bad. :sad:

Just tryin' to help a friend here ... didn't mean to start a pi$$ing contest.

"how about you just leave it since you don't know what your talking about here?"

Ok, consider it "leaved." .......... :lol:

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

BTW - I hope your skin thickens up a bit or you may have a real problem here in the forum.

 er.. Magnus. Don't yell at ANYONE, please? It'll make my ears go deaf REALLY fast. Especially do not yell at the oldtimers here, it'll only make you sound stupid.

That said, the toothpaste approach is good advice. I've heard it before but I wasn't sure if it was a good thing to use on a burnable disk. I know it works fine on stuff like store bought music cds.. but burnable disks are somewhat more fragile (probably why this on has been borked...)

And Geep: No don't worry, I'm staying well clear of RW disks :)

The banana peel thing is intriguing. I'll try that first and if that doesn't work, I'll try toothpaste. I guess banana peel is less abrasive than tooth paste so it won't wreck anything even if it might not work :) 

Heh and now I have the perfect excuse to buy bananas. Hubby blacklisted those since we had an invasion of fruit flies last summer... but I miss bananas and now I have a reason to buy them! L

... and potassium helps prevent charlie horses, too.

 charlie horses? O.o what are those? Are they the ones who rode off with my files?

(seriously.. I don't know that term..runs to Google it...)

Another method is to try washing it with liquid soap and lukewarm water.

And yes, there is a utility which can read damaged CDs.  It's called - imaginatively enough - CD recover.  Generally, it tries to read the TOC and makes several guesses as to what may be on the disc.  It's not bad at recovering image data but it's lousy at recovering mp3 files.

I bought it a long time ago but it should still be available somewhere in netville.

Magnus, I may not be staff any more but I'll ask you to lose the attitude.  Specially where geep is concerned.  What's he ever done to you?   

 back ffrom Google.. or rather Merriam-Webster onlline...  I found a Charley horse which is a pain L And there's potassium in bananas. So I see a - somewhat convoluted - hint of something.

Bananas prevents pain in the arm? That depends on what you're doing with the banana... O.o

happily flying off a tangent

Charlie Horse is an american word for when your muscle tighten up into knot.. And it hurts like crazy but only last a short time..

Here's a fun fact...

The data side of a CD is better protected than the label side.  Scratches to the label side are often more damaging to the data. 

Are you sure the problem isn't your CD drive?  If several CDs "turn unreadable" at the
same time, I'd suspect the drive is starting to fail.

Quote - Are you sure the problem isn't your CD drive?  If several CDs "turn unreadable" at the
same time, I'd suspect the drive is starting to fail.

@ ockham

Yup, good thought ... try using a good CD/DVD cleaner disk ... sometimes, just sometimes ...

AND ... Thanks for the support Paul.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

There are inexpensive devices for cleaning up scratches on discs, try one of them before any home brewed  fix.  If these are really old discs there may not be a fix.  Over time the plastic material can become cloudy.  Even worst is that in the early days of CD-burners many where not  precise enough to create a disc that could be read in another drive.

Sam.. I'll try washing it first of all :) And then look for that program you mentioned.

Ockham/Geep: I have two CD drives in my computer and I tried the CD in both of them. No luck.

It IS an old CD,it's dating back from 2002, so it may be tryly simply dead. the technology for burnable CDs back then wasn't perfected (is it even today?) and I'd heard of CDs going bad, but last time I checked my Poser CDs they all worked, so Ididn't bother burning new copies of them. Shame on me I guess :(

@TrekkieGrrrl, thanks for the heads up. I have some older stuff from that time on CD's too, and I better check them.

 Hey Trekkiegrrll

 Some drives are better than others at error correction- are your drives the same brand? I have a few old CD's (1998) that wont read on one drive-but do on another

 Eric Walters. To be honest I don't know the brand of the drives. I'd assume they're the same, but one is a DVD burner, the other is not, so it's not a given.

You have a point though. I'll try it in another computer and see if it helps.

@ jestmart: The CD looks fine, it has the normal "rainbow" pattern when I look at it, doesn't look cloudy or anything. Slightly worn/scratched but no big or serious looking DEEP scratches.

What inexpensive devices should I look for?

Quote -
Hiya Trekkie,

Sometimes ... just sometimes ... rubbing the surface of a CD in trouble with the inside of a banana skin (to fill in tiny hairline scratches) and then wiping the surface gently with a lint free cloth
can ... sometimes ... just sometimes ...  restore the readability of the CD.

You didn't use CD=R/W disks ......................................... did you? :scared:

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Hmmm that is interesting. I've always heard like Sam.. dish soap sometimes will help.

take a look at this...may not be a bad purchase
http://www.elprime.com/media-recovery.htm

Quote -  So.. is there any program that may help reading old, possibly corrupted disks? Preferably cheap...  (yea I know, I'm pushing it...)

I always just try another computer to read the disc.  Works every time.

k, the label side on a burnable cd IS the data side.  If you use toothpaste to remove scratches try an abrasive paste , some of the new ones are just detergents. 

Try them in a different drive, if you are reading them in a different drive than the one that burned the disk your tracking may be off. 

http://club.myce.com/ may have some suggestions.

Your local library may have a disk cleaner if the disks are scratched.

My local games store has a cd/dvd cleaning/repair system for fixing damaged disks, they do charge a small fee though, something like £1 per disk.

Let us know if it works?  Sharen

it may not even be the scratches.
its a 10 year old disc - a lot of discs start to degrade by then, especially non-premium media stored in less than ideal conditions (filed vertically, in a dark cool place).

try reading them in several different drives - preferably DVD burners. you might luck out.

if you have any other backup CDs/DVDs that are from the same period, you may want to back those up as well while you can. also, when writing CDs/DVDs, dont try and squeeze on every last meg of data onto them or overburn -- they generally start to degrade from the outside edge.

I did not know about the banana (or toothpaste) trick, I'll have to try that next time that happens.   Would that work on DVD's too?  

SkipDoctor, about $20, is one oldest devices and probably the easiest to find.  A quick Google search of "CD DVD scratch repair devises" brought up a lot them, some even cheaper than SkipDocter and some a lot more.

Attached Link: http://www.isobuster.com/

As a side note: At an Adobe seminar I went to, the subject of data back-up was discussed.
The experts (guess they were experts as it cost a lot of money to listen to them) was to convert all your files/data to one ISO image and burn that.
And (as BH said), don't try to max out the disk space.

Chuck

I had a problem with older CDs where nested directories couldn't be read past a certain level. If I had something in a directory structure like this:
Victoria
        Clothing
                 Footwear
                          Heels
I could read files all the way down to Footwear, but nothing in Heels.

My old computer (a notebook) could read them, but not the newer ones. I spent a weekend using the old computer to copy files to an external drive and then used that to burn new DVDs. I've now got files on the original CD, newer DVDs, and on two external drives, one at home and one at another location in case something happens to my house.

Try reading reading your disks on an older computer's CD drive/burner.

I have been burning CDs for over a dozen years, and have only had problems with CDs of one brand-it should perhaps be renamed "Forgetex". 

I have a 1999 "Forgetex" disc that I can read- most of but SOMETHING locks up my computer after awhile-while trying to copy it

 I've noticed, upon close inspection of the affected disk, some small "splotches" on the data side. It doesnt fit with the writing on the front (which were made with assumingly CD-safe markers btw) but I'm beginning to think it's what's causing the problem :( And if so, there's probably no cure. It's three small "splotches" with rainbow-coloured rings around them. Situated midway between the center and the rim. 

I have no idea what has caused them, perhaps some drops of something long ago hit the CD?

So far I haven't managed to read it, but I haven't given up, I'm trying to rig an old computer to run, I have loads of old computers here in all states of disassembly L so it should be possible to get one in an operational state. Thing is, it's probably not enough :(

Dammit it was my oldest Poser backup CD with all my very old stuff. The installed stuff is still in my Runtime (and I have backups of that!) but I think there were also some of my very early renders... :(

I've had some luck with cdcheck found here. It's free too so if it doesn't help you're only out time.

http://www.kvipu.com/CDCheck/

Well, going out on a limb here, but I've been downloading yer stuff for a good 10 years, at least. I don't have everything, but I may have a lot of it...
Of course, this'll be the time that I find out my backups aren't good either....;)

 Just a side note. pouring about an inch ( 2 cm) of apple cider vinegar into a jar with small holes in the lid helps with fruitflies

I had a bad disc that was put into one of those terrible plastic sleeves that when the disc was removed from it parts of the plastic sleeves came with it.  Since I figured it was a lost cause, I used Windex on it and was able to get the drive to read it so I could copy it over to a new disc.  I'm glad I didn't use too many of those sleeves (the semi-clear ones that are different colors) and I don't think they're available anymore.

I know Windex is very abrasive and not an ideal solution, but as a last resort when the banana doesn't work and it's headed for the trash it's worth a try.  Then again, I only tried it once.  It worked so well on the CD that I really did something stupid by using it on a film negative that was filthy and water wouldn't clean it so I used Windex.  It completely destroyed it.  So it's definitely abrasive. 

Periodically I go through all my old CDs/DVDs and make sure they're readable.  If they are more than five years old I'll recopy them.  I find that CDs wear out quicker than DVDs and I only use RW DVDs for temporary storage.  Even if the data will fit on a CD I put it on a DVD because I've had a very low failure rate with DVDs.  Most DVDs that have failed was during the backup process and the software rejected it.

I'm a backup fanatic which is why I have about eight boxes of DVD backups.  I'd hate to do them all over again at the same time.  Now I'm thinking it's probably time to check some of them.

Anyone know the reliability of DVD dual layer discs?  I know they're more expensive which is why I don't purchase too many at once, but with large Poser files they are a necessity.

Well I've joined the club, so far only one disc but it says the files are corrupt. Guess I know what I'll be doing tonight.

I've been backing up data this weekend as well. It's been too long!

Quote - ... and potassium helps prevent charlie horses, too.

Which is EXACTLY why I buy banana's! Potassium is very hard to come by otherwise. A Charley Horse for me is in the middle of the night the muscles in all my toes painfully contract at the same time sending me flying out of bed to flatten my foot on the floor to force them to unclench! Sometimes it's the muscles in my calves, but mostly it's my poor piddies that do it.

those babies hurt.

i need to check all mine too. its been a long time since backup. 7 year old system, its just a matter of time before it goes caput

Both free - can't hurt  :-) 

Unstoppable Copier*: Recovers files from disks with physical damage. Allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together. Using this method most types of files can be made usable even if some parts of the file were not recoverable in the end.

http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P29/Unstoppable%20Copier

Encopy: rescues data from damaged media when standard system copy fails, freezes and or rejects the media. In cases where it is not possible to perform a full recovery, Encopy will try to copy as much data as possible from the damaged files.

http://www.micware.110mb.com/encopy4.zip

Attached Link: http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P29/Unstoppable%20Copier