how to watch mini disc on computer that wasnt finalised

[paulamul]

hi i have alot of mini discs that i never finalised and i no longer have the camcorder. i was reading through some older posts and i read about iosbuster... i downloaded it and the paid the subscribtion. however when i load my mini disc into the computer it doesnt seem to reconise it. it keeps telling me that there is no media present. this is driving me mad. i would appreciate any help.

thanks

[jman98]

You do NOT have "mini discs". You have mini DVDs. mini disc is a musical format that has nothing to do with camcorders.

You need to test ISObuster before buying it. It doesn't work with everything. You can also try ISOPuzzle but no guarantees with it either.

Are your mini DVDs re-writable or normal ones? Re-writable discs aren't really designed for long term storage and there would be some chance with them that they may have degraded over time.

[usually_quiet]

hi i have alot of mini discs that i never finalised and i no longer have the camcorder. i was reading through some older posts and i read about iosbuster... i downloaded it and the paid the subscribtion. however when i load my mini disc into the computer it doesnt seem to reconise it. it keeps telling me that there is no media present. this is driving me mad. i would appreciate any help.

thanks

What type of mini-DVD discs are these? If they are DVD-RAM discs, then that could be the problem. Some PC optical drives cannot read DVD-RAM. Even if the disc is blank or the data is corrupted, ISOBuster will recognize it (as blank media, if it is a blank disc), assuming the optical drive can read it.

[Cornucopia]

Good call, usually_quiet! I bet that's it.

@paulamul, one should ALWAYS try reading your disc via ISOBuster on multiple drives and PCs, as there is variability in their ability to read the various media. Which brings me to the next point: bad media. I don't know what quality media you are using but it could be bad enough such that your drive(s) won't recognize it - period. One way to test this is if you had bought a PACK of discs, some of which have been used AND finalized, others which have been used and NOT finalized. If the finalized ones from that same batch work, the unfinalized ones should be readable also.

One last thing to check: are you sure that those actually HAVE been used? Maybe you got some blanks mixed up with ones you thought were recorded onto... Just thowing out ideas.

Scott