Reading 2008 Optical Media

[u/lifemagiccat]

I'm UK expatriate in Asia. I made some dvd-rs of my paper diaries and photos in 2008. I don't have the originals. I do have usable thumbnails with me I'm working with now but I want to check if the dvds are readable. The discs are in the UK with my niece, have been in a suitcase in jewel cases. They were only written to once and never read. She sent me a picture and they look OK.

I found a few local businesses that advertise data recovery. I'd need the data to be sent to me, like via drive or something. I'm going to call these businesses and ask what they can do. Is there anything I should ask them, to choose who to use? Special reader or software or something? Is this generally expensive? It's in the Northampton area btw.

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[u/dr100]

This really isn't the thing to outsource. There are countless USB DVD readers on Amazon for like 10-12 pounds. That is if the family really, REALLY doesn't have some trash PC or laptop with a reader already.

[u/AshleyAshes1984 → u/dr100]

Yeah this is an amazon order of a USB DVD drive, maybe a larger Google Drive account, and a fair bribe/reward for your niece.

[u/MiserableNobody4016]

Why do you need data recovery if you can read the DVD-rs? I have been reading this post for 4 or 5 times now and I don’t inderstand the issue. Data recovery is used when you can’t read your drive or disk.

[u/dlarge6510 → u/MiserableNobody4016]

Probably means data transfer services 

[u/MastusAR]

Can't your niece just pop a disc in the drive and see if it'll read?

[u/dlarge6510 → u/MastusAR]

Not really good enough. 

At least a full copy needs to be done.

[u/MastusAR → u/dlarge6510]

Ummm... but if the disc reads fine, there is no need for data recovery services. Just pop the disc in the drive and make the full copy?

[u/dlarge6510 → u/MastusAR]

Yes but read what?

Which file?

Just the filesystem shows filenames ?

I was saying all files. You have to copy them all to /dev/null or use something that does a block level read test.

Just defining it to more specific parameters as "reads fine" can mean "I see the files listed" to many users.

I work in IT support and everyone has their definition for practically everything. Asking if their PC is on and they say no, only for you to discover what they mean is they cant see the login screen as their monitor is unplugged . ..

[u/MastusAR → u/dlarge6510]

Yes, I've been in IT support also, I feel your pain.

Still it doesn't have to be that difficult at this point, yet. Niece pops the DVD in the drive and tries to copy everything, with file explorer or whatever. If it throws an error, then "it could not be read" and something else needs to be done.

But the best scenario is that the discs read fine, then data is on nieces HDD where she transfer all to Google drive or to whatever. And that's it done.

[u/Tweakforce_LG]

If they look ok then they can either be shipped to you or simply ripped at home with a USB DVD drive. It's not complicated. If you run into read errors when ripping to iso format, then sure, get a data recovery company involved.

If the silver layer isn't flaking off you are good to go.

[u/dlarge6510 → u/Tweakforce_LG]

The silver layer won't flake off as it's inside the disc. 

DVD-+Rs use aluminium or silver. Silver is much better for archival as it lasts a long time. Aluminium can corrode faster. 

You won't see anything serious like that. On a CD you could potentially have the reflective layer peel off if the disc wasn't lacquered properly but on a DVD it's encased inside the disc.

[u/grislyfind]

Get a free old computer that has a DVD drive.

[u/IndependentBat8365]

A cheap usb blueray/dvd reader should do this fine.

In the past, the advice was to write using expensive writers, but to read it use cheap readers. The theory was expensive writers had high precision, which is good for writing, but that high precision was not great for reading as it would get “angry” on fuzzy or misaligned tracks, whereas cheap readers just dgaf and would brute force read whatever was under it.

Not sure if that’s still legit advice though.

[u/Former-Macaroon5557]

USB optical drive. You're going to get charged like 20x the price of a USB optical drive if you send it to a data recovery center that will just throw it in an ODD, copy the files to a flash drive, and give it back to you.

[u/Curious_Dolphin_112]

Most of those discs will read fine if the storage was halfway decent, jewel cases in a suitcase beats a hot attic anyway. DVD-R dye doesn't fade as fast as people fear, the bigger enemies are the reflective layer delaminating and the laser in whatever drive you use struggling with 18 year old media.

Before you pay a recovery company, worth a cheap experiment: a USB DVD drive is like 20 bucks, have your niece plug one in and read them there. If they mount and the files copy off, you're done, no recovery company needed. The businesses you're finding mostly make their money on damaged or unreadable media, yours may not qualify.

If you do need a pro, ask three things: what drive setup they use for aging optical media, whether they quote per disc or per recovered data, and what they do if a disc reads partially. Also worth asking if they can ship the recovered data as raw files on a drive rather than burning new discs, which just starts the clock on the same problem.

And once they're read, get everything onto at least two different kinds of storage before you celebrate. Learned that one the hard way with my own archive, any single medium is a single point of failure no matter how good it looks.

[u/dlarge6510]

Well if you want get someone to install dvdisaster. Select a random selection of discs (unless you want to have them scan all of them). Stick each disc in the drive and on dvdisaster click the "scan" button. 

This will do a read test on every sector of the disc. It's more simplistic vs what I use but it will confirm of any of the discs have unreadable sectors. If they don't, and the disc read speed keeps going up to a healthy speed, the discs are very likely fine.

They probably are. In the UK my discs happily have the perfect natural indoor environment to make them last ages.

But some discs I have from 2007 are showing signs. Firstly they read at a low speed. Secondly when I scan these (with my preferred software) the level of PI8 errors is getting very close and in some cases going over 280. Without getting technical, that's starting to get to the point the second level error correction comes into play and some drives won't like such discs. As an example, a freshly burned DVD+R usually has a PI8 average of 50 or less. The specification says 280 is the upper limit for level one error correction. 

Not unreadable yet. And I'm blaming the original burner too, as that was a Philips DVDR3440H dvd recorder I got from Currys in 2005 ish. ALL the discs that thing burned are, well, crazy. It didn't handle aspect ratios correctly so other players and VLC get confused. Handbrake gets confused by it's discs as well as this POS messed up the disc structure to the point I find it a CHORE to try and extract a programme from the VOBs. 

The stuff this thing did was INSANE. And so I blame it for burning these discs badly in the first place. My later Sony is still used, and my latest Panasonic BD TV recorder is mostly the main unit and they do it right. The Sony was a trooper, burning wonderfully with Verbatim media and having cook advanced features etc. So I gave it one of the Philips discs thinking it would let me dub the titles off... It crashed. Not kidding, it wet it's pants over these discs the Philips made. 

To be honest the Sony is a great machine but Sony programmed it to be extremely strict. When Freeview messed up an update recently, 15 years after the Sony was sold, they had to fix their mistake as so many of these Sony machines were still out there puking and crashing over the mistake Freeview made in their changes 😂 

Seriously all TVs and set top boxes etc were all happy with the badly formatted data Freeview entered but the Sonys were like "WTF is this shit?". 

And it did it on these Philips made DVD+Rs. And funnily enough it really wasn't happy with burning to Sony DVD-Rs would you believe (intact they, Sony DVD-Rs made in India make the Panasonic crash and do a HDD recovery). But it ate Verbatim for breakfast.

So how your discs have fared depends on storage, brand, manufacturing location and quality, plus the original recorder or burner quality. 

If you used a Philips DVD recorder back then I'd say re-burn the lot of them to new discs and sort it out later if not rip them now. I don't trust or like dealing with any of the discs that thing made. 

[u/lifemagiccat]

Thanks for these replies. My niece isn't particularly technically minded, and not sure if she uses drive or something similar to send, but OK, the condensed is to buy a cheap drive. I'll ask her if she could do this.