gHacks technology news » cd check http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:26:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 CD Data Recovery Tools Overview http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/04/cd-data-recovery-tools-overview/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/04/cd-data-recovery-tools-overview/#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2009 08:07:43 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=11653 Experienced PC users who have been working with computers for ten years or more will eventually run into partially unreadable CDs or DVDs that they have created in the beginning days of their computer usage. Read errors become more common with age which can lead to data loss in the worst case. It is however not always the disk itself that is causing the problems; There are other possibilities from mundane causes like fingerprints or dirt to scratches on the disks surface.

The best practice in the beginning is therefor to clean the disk properly. One could start with a quick dusting using cloth that has been ideally designed for that purpose. This wont remove fingerprints and other dirt though. To tackle those you use liquids to clean the CD. This can again be done with specialized expensive solutions or some warm water and mild soap.

Sometimes the best CD cleaning efforts do not have the desired effect. If data on the CD is unreadable so called CD data recovery tools come to use which try to recover the data from the CD.

CD Recovery Toolbox

The data recovery tool has been specifically designed for CD, DVD and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks. The application has been streamlined for ease of use as the recovery process can be initiated with just a few clicks. It will display the contents of the selected media giving the user the option to select specific files – or all – for recovery.

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cd recovery

Iso Puzzle

Iso Puzzle creates an ISO image of a selected CD or DVD flagging good and bad sectors at the end of the process to give the user an overview of the situation. It will also create a file on the local disk detailing the bad sectors that could not be read. The unique solution by this software program is to utilize different CD or DVD drives to read those bad sectors as error correction differs widely among drives.

iso puzzle

CD Check

CD Check can recover unreadable files from disks. What makes it unique is the ability to create hashes of those files at the first startup. Those hashes can be used to compare the states back then with the current state of the disk. It does come with the means to recovery unreadable files from those disks.

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dvd data recovery software

Copy Cat and Unstoppable Copier

Those two tools are copy software programs that try to copy files from a selected location to another one. They have been designed to use various reading techniques to copy files even from scratched or partially readable media.

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dvd recovery

Do you know of additional free tools to recover CDs or DVDs? Let us know in the comments.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/04/04/cd-data-recovery-tools-overview/feed/ 7 DVD Data Recovery Software http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/06/dvd-data-recovery-software/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/10/06/dvd-data-recovery-software/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:01:54 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=7449 The first step of making sure that important files are safe is to create backups regularly. This can be done with most Windows backup software programs and other operating systems provide means to back up data safely as well. Many users thing that they have done all they could and that their data is safe from this point on. Well, this is not always the case. One major factor that plays a role is the backup location. Data can be backed up on external hard drives, network locations, the Internet and DVD or CD.

Assuming that the initial backup completed error free the most common cause of loosing data are (partial) unreadable backups. It’s actually pretty easy to test if you have CDs or DVDs lying around that you burned several years ago. It is not uncommon that several files on those disks might be unreadable. There can be quite a few causes for this like scratches, exposure to sunlight, great heat or humidity.

One way of making sure that a DVD backup is still readable is to check it periodically with DVD data recovery software that can check file integrity on the disk and provide additional options like computing and comparing file hashes of previous tests or of files on the hard drive.

CD Check is a free for personal use CD and DVD data recovery software that can also check and compare files and directories on the disks.

dvd data recovery software

The data recovery software provides four main functions that are all useful in the backup process.

  • Hashing: Create hashes of files residing in a specific directory of the computer. This can be a partition, folder, CD or DVD drive. Various hash types like MD5, CRC-32 or SHA-512 are available. In addition ISO compliance can be checked.
  • Check: Check a source folder for errors. Can be used in combination with a hash file to check file integrity.
  • Compare: Compare two folders and define compare direction
  • Recover: Data recovery that tries to recover unreadable files

The DVD data recovery software can deal with audio and data CDs, data DVDs and DVDs with media ratings. The software program comes as a portable version and an installer and is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

The download version requires a free registration at the software developer’s website to receive a free registration key to be able to use the dvd data recovery software for more than 30 days.

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