• Hardware

  • Help needed for recovering data from a broken CD !!

Hey all,

I have this CD which is pretty much damaged, and from any cd / dvd drive i try to read it i either get an error or it gets ejected. I tried using CD recovery tools, but without any luck. The recovery softwares cannot even read the CD !

What can I do in this case (other than throwing it ) ? Please if anyone has encountered such a problem before and has managed to solve it, sharing your way won't cost you more than 3 mins of typing !

Thank you ! =D
If recovery software cannot ready the CD, then it is physically impossible to have the data out of the CD. I have never encountered a problem, but if it is cracked, I don't see how you can fix it.
if the CD is that important , radio shack has a cool gadget that removes the scratched surface of the CD :)
actually it's not scratched, it's cracked ... so basically there is no way to read the data out of it =( good bye old videos recorded in high school classes of teachers swearing at us while we dance and make "animal" noises =(
usually i change the DVD/CD drive or copy the cd using nero or use spirto to clean it out or copy and cd data on the HDD (file by file).
but seems you tried them all.
if it was a damaged HDD it would have been easier
dont lose hope, i once read how to recover such a thing, i will try to research it and ill get back to you
Look at this :
... If the cd is not completely broken into 2 or more parts, stick a thin tape on the label side and put the cd in the drive. Download and install the CDRWIN demo application. The demo app limits the cd operations to 1x. But you dun want this app to do anything. Just install and run to make the cd spin at 1x. This low speed prevents the cd crack from expanding. Now open the cd drive contents window and hope that the window shows up at least some contents. If it does :D copy the ones that are readable.
I employed this exact method to recover a lot of data from a badly cracked CD! ...

Im not sure if it works but it doesnt sound reasonable might aswell give it a try!
And the thing i read about is for scratched cds not broken ones, here it is anyway :
http://www.wikihow.com/Repair-a-CD-With-Toothpaste

Hope this helps.
Judging from the position of the crack, the TOC is probably no longer readable... This means that the computer will not be able to know what files the CD contains. So if you ever happen to succeed in getting the drive to recognize it as a CD, you might as well dump as much of the raw data as you can recover, then run that through a recovery program that would look for files in it.
Once the CD is broken, you just throw it. I can't think how could someone believe data on broken CDs is recoverable. Even scratches can make your CD unusable... But once it's cracked, there is no way recovering. Not that I know.
I will try the toothpaste method on one of my defective CDs to see how things go. Thanks :)
its all over the website that toothpaste method, it was once a headline on msn lol
you might as well dump as much of the raw data as you can recover, then run that through a recovery program that would look for files in it.
I'd recommend foremost. Best damn data carving tool ever!
Is there a way we could take a look at the CD? Because we're not sure how bad this is for you, but if we could recover data from a CD that is broken in half, maybe you have luck.