I am a true newbie here.

I have a Sony RDR-GXD500 DVD Recorder which broke down in that it failed to "see" either blank DVDs or pre-recorded DVDs put into it. I took it to the local Sony repair centre and was told by the engineer there that it needed a new "loader" whatever one of these is. The bad news, he told me, was that Sony no longer supply loaders for this model.

Perhaps some learned member of this forum can tell me what a loader is and what it does and, better still, where I can get one.

My biggest problem is that I have a fair number of DVD-Rs which I had not got around to "finalizing" when the machine packed up. Is there any way I can recover the data on these disks even if I have to buy expensive software to do it?

Any help will be most gratefully appreciated.

Alasdair.