My google skills are failing me and thought some of you smart folks here may be able to help me out.
Background:
--------------
I have a lot of my Disney music archives on CDs and DVDs made back in the early 2000s. I used various brands of cheap discs, wrote on some with Sharpies, put sticker labels on some, and some were just stuck in sleeves w/o any writing or labeling. (I accept that I was wrong in using cheap quality discs, putting stickers on them, writing on them, etc. So, slap my hand if you must but I already know I was in the bad.)
I'm now in the process of moving them to external discs for safer keeping (not wanting to start a discussion on pros/cons of external discs vs DVDs).
I'm on a Mac, the CDs/DVDs were recorded using Windows and Mac, in all cases passing verification.
Problem:
----------
So, let's say I have a disc with the following directories (each chock filled with files):
DL_MainStreet
DL_Tomorrowland
WDW_MainStreet
WDW_Tomorrowland
On the vast majority of the discs (regardless of DVD or CD, labeled or not, source burner or computer), I am unable to copy the files in the last directory. It's always the last directory that has problems, regardless of the number of files or size of the directories.
I can copy the first three directories no problem. When I go to copy WDW_Tomorrowland, I may be able to get some (1 or 2) of the files but it'll fart out long before copying all the files the directory.
If I let give the DVD drive a break (about 30 minutes) it will sometimes go, "OHH! Those files! I can read those now." but usually it still just goes "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in ..filename.. could not be read or written. (Error code -36)."
I've tried the discs on two different Mac computers (and therefore different DVD drives) and have problems reading the same files. To complicate matters, trying to read the discs on a Windows machine, the same files are unable to be copied to a hard drive.
So, I'm at a bit of bewilderment why so many of the discs all have the same problems with accessing the files in the last directory. And given it's the same problem on CDs and DVDs, and the fact the discs were recorded on no less than three different computers and drives, I can't pin the problem down to a misaligned laser on a burner since at least three different burners were used in the creations of the discs. Knocking some dust of my old computer knowledge, given that it seems to be directory-related, I'm thinking somehow the portion of the disc that contains pointers to the location of the directories/files is somehow "not right" for whatever reason.
Request for help:
-------------------
Admitting I'm confused, what I really want is way to get the "unreadable" data off the discs and onto external discs. Does anyone here have any idea what my options may be to recover the data off these discs? Along the way, if anyone has any ideas why these even happened in the first place, that would be interesting but not nearly as interesting as a solution to the problem rather an explanation of its cause.
Has anyone had anything like this happen to them as they go back to older CDs/DVDs and try to re-archive their archives?
Hoping someone here has some helpful solutions to this seemingly odd (but very frustrating) problem.
dgo33
Background:
--------------
I have a lot of my Disney music archives on CDs and DVDs made back in the early 2000s. I used various brands of cheap discs, wrote on some with Sharpies, put sticker labels on some, and some were just stuck in sleeves w/o any writing or labeling. (I accept that I was wrong in using cheap quality discs, putting stickers on them, writing on them, etc. So, slap my hand if you must but I already know I was in the bad.)
I'm now in the process of moving them to external discs for safer keeping (not wanting to start a discussion on pros/cons of external discs vs DVDs).
I'm on a Mac, the CDs/DVDs were recorded using Windows and Mac, in all cases passing verification.
Problem:
----------
So, let's say I have a disc with the following directories (each chock filled with files):
DL_MainStreet
DL_Tomorrowland
WDW_MainStreet
WDW_Tomorrowland
On the vast majority of the discs (regardless of DVD or CD, labeled or not, source burner or computer), I am unable to copy the files in the last directory. It's always the last directory that has problems, regardless of the number of files or size of the directories.
I can copy the first three directories no problem. When I go to copy WDW_Tomorrowland, I may be able to get some (1 or 2) of the files but it'll fart out long before copying all the files the directory.
If I let give the DVD drive a break (about 30 minutes) it will sometimes go, "OHH! Those files! I can read those now." but usually it still just goes "The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in ..filename.. could not be read or written. (Error code -36)."
I've tried the discs on two different Mac computers (and therefore different DVD drives) and have problems reading the same files. To complicate matters, trying to read the discs on a Windows machine, the same files are unable to be copied to a hard drive.
So, I'm at a bit of bewilderment why so many of the discs all have the same problems with accessing the files in the last directory. And given it's the same problem on CDs and DVDs, and the fact the discs were recorded on no less than three different computers and drives, I can't pin the problem down to a misaligned laser on a burner since at least three different burners were used in the creations of the discs. Knocking some dust of my old computer knowledge, given that it seems to be directory-related, I'm thinking somehow the portion of the disc that contains pointers to the location of the directories/files is somehow "not right" for whatever reason.
Request for help:
-------------------
Admitting I'm confused, what I really want is way to get the "unreadable" data off the discs and onto external discs. Does anyone here have any idea what my options may be to recover the data off these discs? Along the way, if anyone has any ideas why these even happened in the first place, that would be interesting but not nearly as interesting as a solution to the problem rather an explanation of its cause.
Has anyone had anything like this happen to them as they go back to older CDs/DVDs and try to re-archive their archives?
Hoping someone here has some helpful solutions to this seemingly odd (but very frustrating) problem.
dgo33