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reading the un-readable


ken waters

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I used the efforts of your previous life a lot, and pay due homage and respect here, now. Thanks. :innocent:

Lately I have issues with DVDs which, for whatever reason, have whole blocks of consecutive bad sectors, and while, given a week or two, it is possible to recover the remainder of the data eventually, and since 32,000 sectors is but a blink in an 8Gb home movie and so is easily acceptable, I can't help thinking that it ought to be possible to command my DVD drive to suppress CRC checks entirely.

I'm wondering if it's possible to add this feature as a check box when all else fails ...

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Try enabling the 'hardware retries' checkbox in the settings ('Read' tab). Play around with different values and it should speed things up. You could also drop the 'Software Retries' down for known problem discs and of course enable the 'Ignore Read Errors' option.

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Try enabling the 'hardware retries' checkbox in the settings ('Read' tab). Play around with different values and it should speed things up. You could also drop the 'Software Retries' down for known problem discs and of course enable the 'Ignore Read Errors' option.

 

Well, under 'read errors' in tools -> settings -> read I have 'software retries' set to 0, 'hardware retries' ticked and set to zero, and 'ignore read errors' ticked, but the drive (it's a Sony) is still taking in excess of 5 seconds per sector to tick along. I'd guess it's a firmware thing, and it just takes that long to decide about the first fail, but if there's anything that could be commanded then I'd be willing to give it a try. Do you think trying a different drive would help?

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Try enabling the 'hardware retries' checkbox in the settings ('Read' tab). Play around with different values and it should speed things up. You could also drop the 'Software Retries' down for known problem discs and of course enable the 'Ignore Read Errors' option.

 

Well, under 'read errors' in tools -> settings -> read I have 'software retries' set to 0, 'hardware retries' ticked and set to zero, and 'ignore read errors' ticked, but the drive (it's a Sony) is still taking in excess of 5 seconds per sector to tick along. I'd guess it's a firmware thing, and it just takes that long to decide about the first fail, but if there's anything that could be commanded then I'd be willing to give it a try. Do you think trying a different drive would help?

 

Suppose it is a firmware or hardware limitation. How about a new data box like 'sectors to skip if you get a hard read error that's more than 16 sectors long', with values 8k, 16k, 32k sectors. (I assume you write blank sectors into the output for failed reads anyway.) This way, there would be some data loss, but in e.g. a home movie (with over 1000 secors zipping by per second) who's worried about a little discontinuity.

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If things are that bad you should look at using a program designed for disaster recovery.

 

You should also consider:

 

a. Using better discs.

b. Using a better drive.

c. Taking better care of your discs!

d. Making 2 copies of important stuff and storing the 2nd away somewhere where it's never touched.

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If things are that bad you should look at using a program designed for disaster recovery.

 

You should also consider:

 

a. Using better discs.

b. Using a better drive.

c. Taking better care of your discs!

d. Making 2 copies of important stuff and storing the 2nd away somewhere where it's never touched.

 

I understand. But for e.g. the camcorder user on the hoof with a built-in DVD writer you only get the one shot, and outdoors is an unfriendly environment - changing discs in the wind and rain isn't exactly conducive to best practice. And isn't the whole point of a tool like ImgBurn to help you secure highly ephemeral stuff the moment you get home?

I still think being able to skip ahead an arbitrary amount, even interactively (ImgBurn - "this looks like a bad patch - shall I try skipping over it?") would be a valuable enhancement to the product.

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