backing up a troublesome backup

[cyflyer]

Was wondering about something. Backups that later prove to have been written on crappy media and pixelate on the standalone, sometimes playback ok on the burner/dvd drive. If making a backup of one of these troublesomes, and it reads ok on the computer, to decent media, will you get a good copy, or will you still be transfering the errors of backup 1 ?
Anyone tried this ?

[jtoolman2000]

Yes and sometimes it works and sometimes the reader will crash trying to decypher the data on the crappy disk. Best to go back to your original and re do the process.

[mats.hogberg]

If it reads OK, it reads OK, and the copy will be 100% Errors are where the disc can't be read, and you can't back it up. But as jtoolman points out, it's best to backup the original again.

/Mats

[blinky88]

Burn with DVD Decrypter and check the box "ignore read errors".

[cyflyer]

We are of course talking of the situation whereby the original is damaged/lost and no longer available etc, and to great horror and dismay you discover you backed up to a feeble quality dvd-r that pixelates on the standalone, but may get away with it on the burner.

[Supreme2k]

I usually make sure that the disc is as clean as possible, then let DVDDecrypter have a go at it for a long time. Some I've had to run through a few times. I use file mode, since it's usually one or two elusive files that take the most work.

[Cinemagic]

If your DVD has already been ripped, I simply do a Windows Copy/Paste to a new folder on the HDD and then burn to a new DVD with Nero. If you catch the bad DVD early, then this works fine. There's also nothing wrong with using DVD Decrypter as the first program.

If the DVD has not been ripped, then DVD Decrypter would be the first program I'd use. Keep in mind that if you get an I/O error with DVD Decrypter, chances are that the disk will not be recoverable.

Out of five disks that have gone bad, two were recoverable and three went too far. They all played on a standalone player (with freezig and pixelation) long after they were unreadable with the desktop burner (even with the latest Toshiba dual-layer "reads everything" burner).

IMO, the first time a disk freezes on a standalone player, even for a moment, it's time to burn a new copy on better media.

[handyguy]

"If making a backup of one of these troublesomes, and it reads ok on the computer, to decent media, will you get a good copy, or will you still be transfering the errors of backup 1 ? "

Just try it.

[SCDVD]

Burn with DVD Decrypter and check the box "ignore read errors".

This only works to a point. If the error is limited to one spot on the disc, this can work. But, as is more often the case with bad media, if the errors are more widespread or if they start at a point part way through the disc and continue on from there, this won't help. When the reader reaches a bad spot, it attempts a series of retrys in an effort to recover from the read error. This recovery function is programmed into the drives electronics and is not under system control. Until the drive finishes the retry, it is oblivious to the system. The system has to wait until the drive finishes the recovery attempt before it can do anything else with the drive. When the drive finally gives up on the bad block, it reports the unrecoverable error to the system. If the application is set to ignore the error, it then attempts to go to the next block. If this block is also bad, the process repeats itself - over and over again. The even more fatal error recovery condition is when the media is so bad that the drive cannot even track the data and it literally loses itself and cannot even locate a data block. When these conditions occur, all the king's horses and all the king's men won't fix the problem.