How Can You Fix a Broken Disc?

Xenu · Postby **Xenu** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:14 pm

...well, not broken, exactly. In fact, I don't know WHAT'S wrong with it.

I own two discs that, by all appearences, seem to be in great shape: a Tom Petty "Full Moon Fever" radio disc from the early nineties (which used to play fine, I should add), and The Who Collection. Both discs look fine, top and bottom.

They certainly don't play that way. The Tom Petty disc barely cues up before generating tons of white noise. The Who disc plays...sorta. Tons of skipping, though, and what music *does* get played is often under a wash of distortion.

What's happened to these two discs, and is there anything that can be done to fix 'em?

-D

krabapple · Postby **krabapple** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:57 pm

Can you rip them using EAC at high-security settings?

Might take a long time, but if it works....you'll have 'clean' copies.

Xenu · Postby **Xenu** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:08 pm

I tried. The error correction light moves *very* slowly, and inevitably keeps returning read/sync errors. It takes almost 15 minutes for it to make one pass on one sector.

Postby **lukpac** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:23 pm

What about burst mode?

Those aren't PDO discs, are they?

Xenu · Postby **Xenu** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 11:44 pm

No, that's what I thought. They don't look like PDO discs...they don't have the aluminum to the center, and I believe the TP disc is a USA pressing.

Burst mode produces the same thing I hear when I play the disc normally: noise noise noise.

As an aside, I DID manage to pull off one or two of the songs two years ago from the Who Collection disc, whereas now I can't do crap. I guess it's getting worse? I suppose a poorly-made disc could oxidize regardless...?

Postby **lukpac** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 7:33 am

Have you tried different drives? I haven't had the specific problem you do, but I have had CD-Rs that simply won't play/rip *at all* in some players/drives. Yet in others they work just fine.

krabapple · Postby **krabapple** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 10:33 am

I have a couple of old CDs (like Prnice's 'Sign o the Times', purchawsed back when it came as two separate CD cases) that EAC reads very slowly, then produces synch errors and essentially quits. However, these *play* fine. I never understood why. I can read them in burst mode, though.

Xenu · Postby **Xenu** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 5:16 pm

I have a few like that. These, however, just don't play. I'm thinking of giving up and looking for other copies.

Patrick M · Postby **Patrick M** » Thu Aug 25, 2005 7:58 pm

You don't already have other copies?