Reading old CD-R's

admin · Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 8:25 am

I have some music CD-R's from the early days of the technology. They seem to have degenerated to the point where they are no longer playable or readable. Is there any way to recover the music on these disks?

Bent Romnes · Post by **Bent Romnes** » 25 Apr 2008 9:01 am

b0b, would it be worth trying to 'rip' them to your computer and then to burn them onto a new CD?

Andy Sandoval · Post by **Andy Sandoval** » 25 Apr 2008 9:58 am

I would try Bent's idea too.

Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 9:58 am

The computer can't read them. That's the problem.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 25 Apr 2008 10:07 am

Try them in another computer, or CD drive. Maybe you'll get lucky with a different drive unit and will be able to rip the contents to disk and burn new CDs. Just try to avoid using sticky CD labels, as they are known to eat through the top layer of the CD material, ruining the disks.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 11:04 am

Wiz Feinberg wrote:Try them in another computer, or CD drive. Maybe you'll get lucky with a different drive unit and will be able to rip the contents to disk and burn new CDs. Just try to avoid using sticky CD labels, as they are known to eat through the top layer of the CD material, ruining the disks.

Thanks for the advice.

As for the sticky labels, do you have any real documentation of that? I work for one of those "sticky label" companies, you know.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 25 Apr 2008 11:27 am

A trick, a long time ago with audio CD's, was to use a Black Magic marker and color the label side black. May work with the data CD's too??

Are these CD-R's or RW's? RW's are known to lose format and/or data and those are not recoverable.

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 25 Apr 2008 2:28 pm

I had about 30 DVD's that I applied sticky labels to, that I designed in Quark. After a few weeks some of them wouldn't play any more. I did some investigation and found a lot of people with the same problem. When I removed them with isopropyl alcohol they worked fine. That's just my experience. I'll never use them again.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 2:41 pm

Jack, I'm pretty sure they're CD-R's. I didn't have a CD-RW burner 10 years ago.

Cal, do you remember what brand of labels you were using?

I'm going to try a few different computers and if none of them works, I'll try removing the labels.

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 25 Apr 2008 3:19 pm

It's been 3 or 4 years, but I think they were Avery (sorry). Got 'em at Office Depot. I found a lot of online discussion re this topic, some pro and some con, but this is just my experience. The theory is that they make the disk less than flat after a while, or cause it to rotate slightly lopsided if the label isn't applied exactly in the center.

BTW, the best way I found to remove the labels was to put a finger of iso in the top of the case they came in (upside down) and let the disk soak for a while and then scratch the label off, being very careful not to get any goop on the business side of the disk.

Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 4:07 pm

Think Goo-Gone would work? I use it for all sorts of stuff.

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 25 Apr 2008 4:26 pm

I've never tried it, but it can't hurt to give it a shot, if it's not too caustic.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 25 Apr 2008 5:53 pm

A little off topic here but has anyone tried one of the newer programs that prints your art & copy onto the disk itself?

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 25 Apr 2008 6:03 pm

Epson made a printer that printed onto the disk. Around $100 on sale the last time I looked. I think the disks are a little more expensive.

Jerry Scoope · Post by **Jerry Scoope** » 25 Apr 2008 7:37 pm

Bo
They use that type laeler at our church Iwill find out what kin it is and let you know early next week

Jerry

admin · Post by **b0b** » 25 Apr 2008 9:55 pm

I use inkjet printable CDs all the time now. I have one of those cheap Epson CD printers.

Back to the subject, I tried the CD in several computers and finally found one old CD drive that could read it. I ripped it and made burned a new CD from those tracks, printed on it, and imported it into iTunes on my Mac. Now the songs are in my iPod, complete with cover art!

This was important to me because it was a CD-R of my brother's original music that I made from a cassette a long time ago. I can't find the cassette, and I didn't want to lose the music.

It's weird that modern CD/DVD-RW drives totally fail on these old CD-R's. I guess Apple's "Superdrive" is as "super" as their "iPod Classic" is "classic". $:\$

Cal Sharp · Post by **Cal Sharp** » 25 Apr 2008 10:05 pm

I have a lot of experience trying to mount various CD's on various computers, mostly Macs, and it's a crap shoot.

If everything else fails, I launch Disk Utility and see if that can fix it.

Colin Goss · Post by **Colin Goss** » 25 Apr 2008 11:08 pm

I had the same problem, but with data CDRs. I found a great program called CDRoller
http://www.cdroller.com/index.html
and it worked every time for me.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 26 Apr 2008 9:53 am

Cal Sharp wrote:

I have a lot of experience trying to mount various CD's on various computers, mostly Macs, and it's a crap shoot.

If everything else fails, I launch Disk Utility and see if that can fix it.

Disk Utility couldn't read this disk to make an image of it. I think that the Superdrive itself is failing to read it.

Now that I've actually succeeded (on a very old Windows computer), I'm less concerned about harming the original disk. I removed the label with Goo-Gone. It makes less noise in the drive now, but the errors are the same.

Dickie Whitley · Post by **Dickie Whitley** » 26 Apr 2008 10:13 am

b0b - unfortunately (like Wiz) I have also read that the sticky lables cause problems, especially with DVDs. Wiz can correct me on this but I have also read of cases of CD/DVD "rot", where problems with the adhesives of the layers degrade and eventually destroy the medium. I'm hopeing they fixed that one.

Robert Leaman · Post by **Robert Leaman** » 26 Apr 2008 12:55 pm

If you think the labels cause problems on the CD, wait until one comes off (Avery) inside the CD drive. They are almost impossible to extract. Fortunately, the label came to the front after a few plays and it was possible to pull it out in one piece.

Jon Moen · Post by **Jon Moen** » 26 Apr 2008 8:27 pm

One of my old cd drives was 4x and another was 8x. I remember reading that some old cds could not be read on the 8x drives as they were too fast. The newest drives are possibly spinning way too fast to read a disk you created at 2x or 4x.

Jon

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 27 Apr 2008 6:24 am

b0b wrote: As for the sticky labels, do you have any real documentation of that? I work for one of those "sticky label" companies, you know.

b0b;
Here is some quick documentation about sticky labels causing problems on CDs and DVDs. Read reply #6 on that forum.

Post by **b0b** » 27 Apr 2008 9:27 am

That's very interesting, Wiz. I'm going to forward that to our product engineers.

Greg Cutshaw · Post by **Greg Cutshaw** » 27 Apr 2008 11:45 am

All of my CD with stick on labels have warped. Actually the CD players like thise in cars that heatr up more, cause the CD to warp the most. They take a set warpage, heat up in the car, then warp even more and won't play at all. Cool them down and they play again. They are so warped you can see it with the naked eye. I print all my labels now with a thermal printer or Light Scribe (ugh!).

Back on topic, I haven't had any CD-R's fail yet. Some of my older ones are about 9 years old and still play.

Greg

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