Sony DVD recorder ruined my mini disc

[Leoslocks]

What hetch did was illustrate the PrivateMessage icon in his Post Message Header.

Click Here should have worked. clicking the icon above 'Message' in my post would open the Private Message window for sending Leoslocks a pm..

[mreuter]

I'm glad to see that someone finally agrees that the damage to this particular disc was caused not by bad media but rather much more likely as a result of the Sony DVD recorder and a possible misalignment of the disc in its tray. That noise and the immediate subsequent failure of the disc to play is just too much of a coincidence to ignore.

I'm not going to say that the drive may not have shaken the disc hard enough to cause a failure (layer separation). However, if anything happened to the disc between the last time you looked at it and when you put it into the recorder, the recorder would probably act as you described (thrashing the head searching for data). So, it wouldn't really be a coincidence that it no longer worked after your recorder "discovered" that the disc was no longer readable. Kind of like saying you found a lost item in the last place you looked....

[levl]

Thanks mreuter. I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by "anything happened to the disc". I can only guess that what you meant is that it was dropped, struck, subjected to extreme heat or light or in some other way accidently abused. This disc, like the other 5 from my trip, have been kept all together on a table only about 6 feet away from the DVD recorder and have had nothing done to them which I could possibly describe as unusual and in fact all have been handled in the same way. Believe me, I am even more than you, searching for some explanation as to what went wrong so that I might know how to avoid it in the future and even now still will not place any of my vacation mini DVD discs into this Sony recorder as a precaution. I still would like to know if anyone else has ever had an experience like this in which a disc was damaged, erased, made unreadable and unrecordable after simply being placed into a recorder. Sony is still not responding to any of my queries so I can only look for answers on this forum.

[Nelson37]

As for disks being damaged in almost identical circumstances, absolutely.
The major difference is that there was obvious physical damage to the disk.

One of my co-workers actually had a disk literally explode in one of the hi-speed CD drives, the general problem is a slight imbalance in a rapidly spinning object.

Have you looked very carefully at both surfaces of this disk and compared it to other used disks, checking for ANY sort of change or disturbance in the surface?

You mention disks sitting on a table. For how long? Is the table sunlit, at any time of the day? Is it possible any sort of liquid could have been on the table, at any time? Were there any children, or animals of any kind, in the house?

[Dragonsf]

Are there any visible defects on the upper surface (where any printing is)? Maybe the reflective layer is damaged.Scratches/black spots/finger prints....
Can you see, if the downside surfaces still looks written on?

[levl]

Nelson: To my untrained eye, I cannot see any real differences between any of the good discs and the bad disc. I have examined these discs under good light conditions (not too bright just in case it can somehow damage the disc - you can see I'm becoming paranoid). Maybe it takes an eye that knows what to look for exactly but I am looking for differences in any kind of appearance and really can't find anything on either side. As for the discs sitting on a table, they were all in their own jewel cases which is how I always have stored them except of course when they are either in the recorder or the camcorder. The table is not in any sunlight, near any heat source and remember, all six discs have been stored there stacked together one on top of the other. As for children and animals, my "kids" are 31 and 33 and left home some time ago and the dog they owned died 13 years ago and has not been replaced - we are kid and pet free right now so the rug rats and/or nasty critters/varmints theory doesn't apply here, thank goodness .

Dragonsf: I have examined the upper surface and it looks just like that of the good discs. The only slight difference is on the downside (I gather the recorded side) where there appear to be very slight differences in shading toward the middle, however this disc had only about 25 minutes of video recorded on it and it may be that I am seeing recorded and unrecorded patterns. I think I have seen this on other discs which are not completely full yet work fine.

[Dragonsf]

Yes, slight differences in the shading on the downside surface show the recorded area.It's from the middle hole on, that's as it should. Alcohol120% should be able to read that, even if the TOC is destroyed (it would of course report errors). Is the surrounding of the middle hole perfect?No fissures,hair cracks?Have you access to polarized light? Or put it between to pol-filters disposed at 90 degree against each other.This could show stressed areas.

(I'm nearly out of wits, maybe you should send me a copy too

[levl]

Dragonsf: Looking at the bad disc, I do notice a lighter irregular shaped area very close to the center hole in an area I thought would not be media for recording. It is concentric to the hole, goes around only about 3/4 of the circumference and is very narrow, maybe 1 to 2 mm but is not uniform in width and somewhat irregular in a shape that is not perfectly circular. As for seeing the disc, I guess "hech" will probably have first crack at in Germany sometime soon. I don't think I can make a copy of it since it won't be accepted by any playing/recording device - they all say it is blank and cannot be either played or recorded.

[Dragonsf]

I know, therefore the

You are describing a fissure, which could be a result of an uncentered reading access.

[levl]

Sorry, could you please explain that in a bit more detail to a totally inexperienced DVD user? Is this something good ( I think I know that it is not). If it is the source of my problem, how did it get there and is it repairable?

[Dragonsf]

It's bad anyway. As DVDs rotate very fast, centrifugal forces are high. Such force can first produce serious cracks and destroy a DVD completely. It can't be repaired.
In your case, this fisure seems to be the result of the unaligned (whatsever) insertion of the media.
My wild guess is, that due to the fissure some air got between the layer and had sort of chemical reaction with the dye. This normally is visible as black spots.
But normally the DVDs are sealed up to the first outer ring (where the DVD ID is printed).Please look, if the crack is inside (between the outer ring and the hole) or outside (to the shaded area).

[levl]

I hope that I am interpreting you correctly so here goes: If the DVD ID has something to do with what look like a series of dashes and dots, then they are far from the center of the disc, about 1.4 cm from the edge of the hole. The irregularity which I described to you is quite close to the center hole, only about 3 to 5 mm from the actual edge of the hole. Remember that this is a mini camcorder DVD disc (8 cm) not a regular size disc. Does this help?

[Dragonsf]

Not really (it confuses things more). You are right, assuming the barcodes as the ID ring.
Even if it's a mini DVD, the inner dimensions should be the same (otherwise the head doesn't know, where to start from). Fissures in this region shouldn't effect the recording area at all. I more and more believe, that this is not the source of the trouble but a symptom.
Another wild guess: maybe the DVD got too hot during the alignment attempts.

[levl]

Let me try to describe the location of this "fissure" hopefully better this time. The diameter of the hole in the center of the disc is about 1.5 cm. From the edge of the hole moving outward to the edge of the disc is first a ring about 3 mm wide which looks like clear plastic and can be clearly seen on both sides of the disc. Then, the next ring looks white on both sides of the disc and is about 4 mm wide and it is in this region where the fissure exists -right at the inner edge of the white ring. The bars and dots are much further away from this area and appear to be on the actual recording media (the shiny part of the disc). Am I doing any better?

[levl]

I should have also pointed out that in this "white" ring, on the front side of the disc is printed "Sony Corporation DVD+RW 1.4GB 4X" which I think is what you meant by disc ID.

[Dragonsf]

Yes, but I did understand you well the first time. The confusion is about the cause of the problems and not your description (which is crystal clear to me).
The descripted area is pure plastic (the dye starts at the ID ring and should be sealed just starting from this ring to the outer edge).
As you can't see any spots/cracks/scratches inside the recording area, I can't find any reasonable explanation other than heat or light.

[levl]

I don't think I have ever examined any object in my entire life so intently or for so long as this miserable disc. I don't see anything that really jumps out at me as being significantly different between this disc and a "good" one as I look at both of them at the same time. If I understand you correctly, if there was a crack originating from the center of the disc, this would allow air to get inside the layer or layers of the disc causing some type of oxidation reaction with the dyes within the disc and I should see some blotches, discolouration, darkening indicating this breach of air into the disc. I also gather that if this happened, the changed dyes would render the disc ruined. But I don't see any evidence of differences between any of my mini discs so I guess I'll pass the disc on to Hech assuming that Sony never gets back to me after the numerous emails I sent them. Thank you very much for your time and attempt to come up with an answer.

[Dragonsf]

Douitashimashite.
I had some weeks ago a similar problem with my archived music. A DVD had some oxydation at the edge (visible black blotches) and wasn't readable anymore.
Lucky me: I always make two backups of everything and keep them in different places (and different media). So could restore everything fast.

Good luck the next time anyway (sorry, that we couldn't be of more help).
Maybe some Alcohol (120% outside or 53% cask strength inside) will help.

BTW:Why is Laphroaig Whisky illegal in Canada/USA?

[levl]

Don't apologize. You did everything you could and I really do appreciate your efforts. Too bad that Sony who made both the recorder and disc couldn't have a customer support division that could be nearly as cooperative or helpful.

[Dragonsf]

This 'sorry' is not to apologize: it's the Japanese way of telling that a) I acknowledge the problem and b) I do care about it (even if it's someelse's fault).
It that sense:ganbare ne (keep on trying).

[hech54]

OK...I have "The Disc".
ISOBuster Pro reads BLANK
CDRoller also reads BLANK
Ulead MF2 "Edit Disc" also reads BLANK

Tried the edit/restore disc function on my Philips
DVDR985 Recorder(a hidden - remote activated function)....nothing. It reads the disc but spits it back out....but does not keep(accept) it as a blank disc.....interesting.

Then I put a small 7kb .jpeg file on the disc with Prassi Ones....burn completed as normal.

Went back to ISOBuster and it then found other data besides the 7kb .jpeg file....but it only amounts to 529kb....hardly enough to be any kind of video.

I guess that is about it for this disc...

[Cornucopia]

Isn't it possible to do a SECTOR COPY in ISOBuster? How might that work with supposedly blank discs that really aren't blank?
If it's possible to pull the into off, you could then Hexedit and add on headers/etc. and get maybe a section of the original...

>>>If you've burned another session, I guess the point is moot.


Scott

[hech54]

There weren't many options open in ISOBuster to begin with...it read is as blank.
I learned the trick of adding a very small object to a mucked up DVD to give it some sort of structure again....then retry ISOBuster....from my old Philips DVD Recorder days when computers had trouble reading certain DVD's...it worked but not as expected.

[johnnyelectron]

I have a Sony GX7 DVD recorder, I used a Sony miniDVD in it, and it crapped-out the whole deck until I was able to get it to work with an old 4X speed DVD-R again. I don't know why Sony would put a small disk depression in their tray if it only works with full-size discs.