Good SATA drive for read/ripping scratched or damaged DVDs

[darkin]

I buy a lot of used DVDs and rip them to my media server. As you would expect these discs are often have a lot of scratches or other forms of damage. I'm looking for a SATA DVD burner that is good at reading damaged discs. I don't care so much about DVD writing quality. I've heard that the LiteOn iHAS424-98 and Sony Optiarc AD-7260S are good drives. Thanks.

[classfour]

I have two AD-7260s, burn well, read well - but not as good as the ol' panny 2X burner - it'll try all day to pull data when the Sonys lock up.

[redwudz]

Just my opinion, but you are probably better off getting the scratched discs polished or polishing them yourself. Not much of anything is going to read through a heavy scratch, though some readers may do better with light scratches than others. If the disc is badly damaged, you might be able to read everything except the part under the scratches, though that doesn't help much as you would have missing video.