Combine two damaged DVDs to make one good one

[ravenswd]

I have 2 copies of the same DVD. They're not encrypted, they're ones I made myself several years ago. I've lost the files used to make them, so I was attempting to copy them back to my hard drive. However, each of them has some bad spots. Is there any software that can read both disks and use the good parts of one to fill-in the bad spots of the other?

[october262]

try ISO Buster - https://www.videohelp.com/software/ISOBuster

[abolibibelot]

IsoBuster doesn't have the ability to combine two sources into one image, at least not the version I have, which is not so recent – could it have been implemented later on ?
IsoPuzzle does – although I haven't tried it.
Also, ddrescue can be used for that purpose.

Problem is, usually writable optical medias like DVD-R tend to degrade at the outer edge first, and if they're of the same brand / model they will most likely have a similar degradation pattern, so the probability of recovering a complete image out of the two discs is rather low unfortunately...

[Cornucopia]

Yes it does (ISOBuster). Called Managed image (using *.IBP/*.IBQ extensions). Has had it since ~v2.x or so (now up to v4.x).
Use multiple discs, multiple drives. As long as they came from the same image source (so should have identical sector layout). Have successfully used this feature a number of times.

Scott

[ravenswd]

Sorry for not replying to this thread sooner - I didn't want to respond until I had a chance to try your suggestions. However, it turns out that the problem was not bad spots on the disks after all, but a faulty DVD drive. I tried both disks on another computer and they both worked fine.

However, if I ever run into this problem (legitimately) in the future, I'll try the suggestions above and let you know if they work.