Page 1 of 1

CD Data recovery

PostPosted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:22 am
by dolphinius_rex
I'm doing a favour for a customer of my workplace (no money is being exchanged for this). Basically, the client runs a Recording Studio, and backups are all done on Mitsui's Gold CD-Rs. Now, 4 years ago, for whatever reason (possibly poor availability?) he used some Mitsui Silver CD-Rs for some of his archives. He now needs the data on these discs, and finds that they do not work at all! (for those interested, since these discs are over 4 years old, they were made by Mitsui BEFORE they were bought out and turned to crap by C.S.I. !!!, so there is no reason I can think of for this to happen!). So I'm trying to recover as much data from them as possible.

Right now I have them plunked in my Plextor Premium CD-RW drive, but there are still LOT'S of read errors, and I'm thinking I won't get any intelligible data.

I'm currently running one of the four discs on the Plextor Premium with Alcohol 120% set to retry LOT'S of times, and to read it at 1x if possible. I've also got it using Advanced Data Detection. I also have it set to recover the best bytes from each sector.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what could be done better in order to recover more data?

Your comments are appreciated!!

Thanks!

PostPosted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 7:42 am
by RJW
Hmm how about better drive.
My experience is that most older drives (plextor, teac and yamaha) are better readers as there newer brothers. I will ask a friend of mine who should know which drives are better readers. I do know that my PX-241040TA outperforms other people plextor premium drives when it comes on reading bad media.

Ohyeah and I allready know of problems with Mitsui silver.
(The only thing there good at is that they need low power so drives that are as good as death can still burn them)
When PC-active retested there 2 years old burns the Mitsui own disc's then showed some sign of ageing why TY and even CMC disc's of the BASF/EMTEC brand didn't show it. While the signs were not that big it did show them. (MBIL and Princo were completely f-cked. why Mitsui just scored 2/3 points ( 1point variation is normal but 3 is a serious sign of something is happening specially if you compare the BLER mappings and see what is going on.) lower on CDA-3000. Which was still excellent but it did age. SO much for there supperior pthalocyanine. You can have the best dye in the world but if you screw up on other stuff your media will still be a coaster very fast.)

I really have lost any faith in any Mitsui media unless there is actually some good quality controle on them. We are talking the more expensive golden ones or disc's they make for third parties that do controles themselves.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 12:34 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Well, the drives I have available to me are the following:

Plextor Premium
LiteON 40125s -> LiteON 48125W
Pioneer DVR-107
LiteON LDW-401s - > LiteON LDW-411s
LiteON SOHW-812s -> LiteON SOHW-832s
Plextor PX-712a
LG 4163B
BenQ DW1620
NEC 3500a

I can also probably borrow a Creative 12x CD Burner (LiteON OEM I believe, don't know the model # by heart).

I'll see if I can find other drives...

PostPosted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:06 pm
by RJW
Well I know that TEAC made some sick drives when it came to reading.
A friend of me once damaged a disc with sandpaper and his teac ( I think it was the 24x model) could still read it why his plextor Px-2410TA had problems.
And I do know that PX-241040TA is a better reader as the premium at least that's my experience.
Wasn't the yamaha F1 also not a very good reader or am I screwing things up now again. Yep to lazy to do some real searching.

PostPosted: Thu Feb 10, 2005 6:09 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Ok... I'll look for a TEAC or Plextor 24x reader.

Would a TEAC DVD-ROM be a good reader? I might be able to get ahold of one of those...

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 5:10 am
by RJW
Hmm I will also look in C't to see which old dvd-roms are supposed to be the best readers I think they checked this once. However it might take quite some time because time is really limited these days.
So don't expect anything really before the end of next week.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 8:54 am
by RJW
A quick answer from the person who should have some info.
It was probally a 24x TEAC cd-writer that he used probally that evening.
Which I allready thought it was.
However he claims that some older TEAC SCSI models were even better.


According to this person.
The last decent drive TEAC so far sold was the 40x.
After that the error correction went really down hill
The newer DVD-ROMS/DVD burners are not that good.

I forwarded your list and he thinks that the premium and the lite on cdwriters are probally the best drives you can use of what you have listed.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 10:21 am
by dodecahedron
isn't the 40x CD-RW drive the last one that TEAC actually designed themselves?
all the newer drives (including DVDR/W drives) are rebadges, no ?

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 1:14 pm
by Ian
dodecahedron wrote:isn't the 40x CD-RW drive the last one that TEAC actually designed themselves?
all the newer drives (including DVDR/W drives) are rebadges, no ?


Yeah, pretty much. TEAC used to make some kick ass drives. Kinda sad.

PostPosted: Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:23 pm
by dodecahedron
yeah, it is.
the 40x TEAC was a great drive.
oh yeah, i remember the days of the great 40x TEAC/Plextor/LiteOn wars...

PostPosted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 11:25 am
by Han
Besides an excellent reader, such as TEAC CD-R5xS (yes, SCSI one), you should bring up a special recovery program, such as BadCopy Pro.

PostPosted: Sat Feb 12, 2005 4:48 pm
by dolphinius_rex
Yeah... after waiting 40 hours or so for Alcohol 120% to attempt a recovery, and having it useless, I brought out BadCopyPro and now I'm waiting to see how it performs. I'm just using the trial version at the moment, and I'll go full registered if it works well. It appears to already be doing a much better job though! :P