Optical Media Preservation - Repair and Reclamation of Data From Optical Discs

Repair and Reclamation of Data From Optical Discs

If scratches on the laser-reading side of an optical disc prevent it from being read, it may be possible to recover all or most of the content once, and transfer it to another storage medium. There are software packages that analyse data on a damaged storage medium and can recover some or all otherwise inaccessible information. Commercial companies offer data recovery services. Also, the disc itself can be repaired. There are various machines that will repair discs by polishing, buffing or grinding the playable surface. Usually the disc will appear like new and most importantly the data can once again be read by the laser. Some game shops, pawnbrokers and supermarkets provide a disc repair service. However, since this is an ablative process in which a layer of the substrate is removed, it is only safe to do a few times before risking the loss of the whole disc.

Read more about this topic:  Optical Media Preservation

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