Dead CD-R. Can it be revived?

[jcam_44]

I did some searching but couldn't find anything. So here is the dilemma. I bought an album that doesn't play in any cd player I own (3 separate units including my car), my external disc drive on my Mac, my MacBook Pro (when I had a similar issue with a Miles Mosley in the past the MacBook Pro worked) or a PC or my playstation. My Mac and MacBook both see the disc as blank and the cd players either blank or error. Lastly the PC read the data but I received an error every time I tried to rip it. Anyone have any ideas on how to get this music off the disc?  

[Ted O'Reilly]

I've had this happen too.  I've saved a few of them by making a direct copy of the damaged disc...for some reason, the new copy will play, though perhaps not all of it.  It's worth a try...

:::I've just used whatever Windows Media Player offers.  I know naught about technical stuff

Edited January 5, 2019 by Ted O'Reilly

[sonnymax]

What software are you using to copy the cd-r to your hard drive?

[jcam_44]

I've tried everything from iTunes, to Toast, Windows Media Player, to opening the disc in the search and copying the files directly as "data"

[JSngry]

It's a CD-R and you bout it in it's current condition? It sounds like you bought either a data disk, or else a CD-R that was never finalized (is it an Audio CD-R)?

Have you ever gotten it to play on ANYTHING? Where did you buy it, in a store or online from a "some guy" type seller.

If the PC read the data, what kind of file(s) did it say they were?

I'm looking for some way to say that you didn't get screwed in this deal, but right now, I can't find that.

[Shrdlu]

I assume that you have considered returning this disk for a refund or a replacement.

Usually, a defective disk can be read by a computer. My daughter had a pop CD that got scratched, but the computer read it in perfectly and I put the music onto a CDr for her.

Windows Media Player is, well, "Who's the leader of the Club that's made for you and me ... ". It usually turns its nose up at anything I ask it to do. I use VLC for audio and video, because it works.

For ripping, I always use the old Winamp. The company shut down, but it still works. I rip at 320 mp3, which (perhaps after years of house music, which I DJ) sounds fine to me. If you want WAV, you will need different software.

If I couldn't suck the data off your disk, back she goes to the dude.

[jcam_44]

Thanks Shrdlu I'll try Winamp. 

 

Not worried about being out a little money for this cd. Something that is rare and it wasn't much money. I would like to hear the tunes though. I believe it was finalized in the past, I have seen the "not finalized" error before. 

 

[sonnymax]

Since you have a few Macs, try the free X Lossless Decoder (XLD). I've used it for years without any problems. If your cd-r is defective, XLD will tell you where the problem is.

[Scott Dolan]

I’m with Jim, it sounds like the session was never finalized. Oddly enough it’s really easy to do if you’re not paying attention. At least it was on the older programs I used back when I was burning them on a regular basis. Last few I’ve done were done using iTunes, which thankfully automatically finalizes each session. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Do you have Exact Audio Copy on your PC? I have been able to "see" music using EAC but it is not the most forgiving for ripping damaged CDs. For those, I use CD-EX.

FYI - you can't use a copy tool to copy audio off of an audio CD. You'll only get .cda files, which a re useless for playback.

With the disc in your PC drive, try opening File Explorer (right mouse-click the start button and select File Explorer), find the drive with the disc (D: likely) and right-mouse click it. Look at the Properties. See what it says. Next, see if you can click "Copy disc". As mentioned above, sometimes a copy will play where the original wouldn't.

[jcam_44]

  On 1/6/2019 at 2:34 PM, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Do you have Exact Audio Copy on your PC? I have been able to "see" music using EAC but it is not the most forgiving for ripping damaged CDs. For those, I use CD-EX.

FYI - you can't use a copy tool to copy audio off of an audio CD. You'll only get .cda files, which a re useless for playback.

With the disc in your PC drive, try opening File Explorer (right mouse-click the start button and select File Explorer), find the drive with the disc (D: likely) and right-mouse click it. Look at the Properties. See what it says. Next, see if you can click "Copy disc". As mentioned above, sometimes a copy will play where the original wouldn't.

Expand  

I'll try this tomorrow. You are correct about .cda files. That was all I could see. Thanks!

  On 1/6/2019 at 1:48 PM, sonnymax said:

Since you have a few Macs, try the free X Lossless Decoder (XLD). I've used it for years without any problems. If your cd-r is defective, XLD will tell you where the problem is.

Expand  

XLD didn't work. 

[JSngry]

Ok, if you can see data (.cda) files, that's what happened - you bought a data disc, not a music disc.

Kevin probably knows about this much better than I do, but I think that what you're going to have do now is try to convert the .cda files to a music format and then burn a new CD-R from the converted files.

Google shows a lot of topics about this, none of them complicated. You just have to know what you have and how you want it to end up.

However, it might be that there is no music to get, since the .cda files might just serve as "markers" to the actual music itself. And if you don't have THAT data, then I think you're gonna be screwed.

.cda files explained: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cda_file

[lipi]

Seeing .cda files unfortunately tells you nothing. If you stick a standard red book audio CD in a Windows machine, Windows will generate a .cda file for each track, and show them in the filesystem as if they were on the disc. It is possible that some goofball wrote .cda files to a data disc if they tried to copy an audio CD by dragging files around, but then these .cda files would show up on your Mac as well. Which brings me to:

When you say your Macs see the disc "as empty", what does that mean? When you pop it in, does a dialogue pop up asking you what to do with the empty disc? Or does it get mounted on the desktop but Finder shows nothing when you open the disc?

If it gets mounted, Get Info on the disc (command-I or right-click->Get Info). What do the fields Capactiy, Available, and Used say? (You'd expect to have about 10MB used for each minute of music, and a properly finalized disc will show 0 for Available.)

 

Edit: Also, to clear up confusion: a .cda file does not contain music. It's simply a link—a reference—to the file that contains the music. So you cannot convert a .cda file; you convert the audio stream, using the .cda files to find your start and end points.

Edited January 7, 2019 by lipi

[jcam_44]

When i put it in my Mac it says:

 

You inserted a black CD. Choose an action from the pop-up menu or click ignore.

 

Windows media plays showed tracks and playing times but would try to rip but every time there was an error.  I really believe the cd was finalized at one time. this CD is from 2000. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

If this CD-R is from 2000 and it fails to play, the CD-R itself may simply have failed. I've had a few CD-Rs fail on me. Once these junky CD-Rs failed, I could not find any way to get the music off of them. All were bought as regular CDs so I never determined if it was the CD-R manufacturer but that would be my guess.

For my own burns, I always used Mitsui or Taiyo-Yuden CD-R blanks. I have burns that are almost 24 years old now (I bought my first burner in 1995) and I've never had one fail.

FWIW, if I ever (accidentally) buy a CD-R these days, the first thing I would do is extract the .WAV files to my PC for permanent back-up and then burn a back-up CD-R version using a well-made blank. I still have a 50 or 60 left from the old days.