How can I rip a badly made DVD?

[semmel]

I unfortunately got scammed - I bought a series of DVDs that came from China with US Region Code, and one of them barely plays on my DVD player, the other can't even get started. One of my DVD ROM Drives can at least get a directory off it, but I wasn't able to rip it - too many read errors.

I am wondering if there is a tool that allows me to lower my DVD ROM Drive speed to keep the laser on track, even if the track is uneven or otherwise in bad shape, so I can copy the DVD to a DVD-R

Or maybe there are other ideas or tools out there?

I even tried Alcohol 120% because it can skip read errors in a fast way, but it still took hours and hours and still didn't finish, and it found so many errors that I finally gave up.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[guns1inger]

If it is that difficult to read then the data you are after might not even be recoverable at any speed. ISOBuster is often recommended (and does a good job in may circumstances). You might also look at ISO Puzzle, which is free.

However, be prepared for disappointment.

[classfour]

The last Chinese disc that I got my hands on was brought back by an friend, and proved to be a challenging rip.

In the end, I set DVD Decryptor to "cycle the tray on disc read errors" and ripped the disc with ripit4me. I also had to use my lucky drive: Panasonic LFD-521 A burner so old, you probably would have a hard time finding a working one - a very early 2X burner.

If you have a drive that's a good reader, that method may work.

I've ripped discs that even isobuster crapped out on using that method.

[lordsmurf]

The drive is more important than the software. I have three BTC drives for this very reason.

[jagabo]

Nero's DriveSpeed will let you limit the read speed of the drive.

[jman98]

As lordsmurf says, it can be helpful if you have access to multiple DVD-ROM drives. I have 2 PCs and 3 drives between them and I've had to use all 3 drives for some problematic DVDs like you are talking about. I've had to rip different parts of the DVD on each PC and then assemble them back together on one PC after ripping.

[semmel]

Thanks for the many replies so far!
I have multiple computers, one of them with a DVD ROM and a DVD Burner, and I tried just reading it with Explorer in 4 drives - only my newest one, my laptop, was able to open the file structure of that disk.
I will check if in all my junk I may have some older drives, and I'll try the software you guys mentioned, and I'll keep watching for whatever else you can come up.

Thanks so much!

... and I just realized that the drive that read the DVD the best is limited to 6x speed according to Nero I manually added 1x and will see if it does any good - otherwise I'll try other drives.