How to recover MOST of scratched CD’s data

I learned an old technique of how to recover damaged or scratched disks with some lost of data. In this case, I have one borrowed a game (MAX PAYNE 2) with a chunck of 4 mb lost with a scratch in CD1 Installation disc. Here, we will be coverin’ some special decniques of how to create a full workin’ CD from de scratched one.

First some tools will be needed:

1. Alcohol 120%
2. UltraISO
3. Windows XP/2000 (not tested on 95/98/me)
3. Small piece of cotton
4. Dry cleaner paper
5. Finally, some cookin’ oil

First step - preparin’ de CD

Get de cotton and drop some water. Start cleanin’ vertically de surface of CD. Do it 3 times and dry de water with a piece of dry cleaner paper. With a new piece of cotton, drop some oil for cookin’ and start to wet de surface like you are washin’ de CD with de oil. Dry carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on de microsurface of de scrath. It’s okay. Seems de oil helps de laser of de CD/DVD driver to read de surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs. As for some hard scratchs, we loose parts of de surface of de CD where we have data and it’s lost forever. But if it is lost, try anyway. With this tip, 80% of de small scratched CD’s coud be recovered.

Second Step - testin’ de CD

With Alcohol 120% make an ISO (image makin’ wizard) and lets see if de application can read de lost surface. In my case Alcohol 120% had recovered 60% of de data. This is not enough. I have also tried oder applications, but to no avail. But de CD/DVD driver laser CAN recover all de data in this case. That proves de data is still dere. What do we do next?

Third Step - makin’ de new CD

We can do it with de main copy of CD in a folder in Windows. Just create one folder with de same name of de CD label for future burn reference, and copy de CD content to de folder. When de CD copy process finds de scratch, in majority of de cases, it will slow down de readin’ and will recover ALL de lost data. If not, it just tell you dere’s an unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it’s not my case, finally Windows Explorer got all de data from de scratch and made a copy in de folder. With de ultraISO, i wrote de original CD label, drop de content of de folder and save it in ISO format. You can Test de new CD just mountin’ de iso in de Alcohol 120%. In my case i did ISO of de two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installin’ from de mounted ISO. It works like a charm!