Recovering media images
Walkthrough

Please make sure that dvdisaster has been configured as described in the basic settings section. Then perform the following steps:

Insert the defective medium into a drive which is directly connected to your computer. You can not use network drives, software drives and drives inside virtual machines.

Close any windows which may be opened by your operating system for viewing or performing the medium contents. Wait until the drive has recognized the medium and the medium has spun down.

Select the drive containing the defective medium in dvdisasters drop down menu.

		If you are using error correction files enter the file name in the shown field. Leave this entry blank when the medium has been augmented with error correction data.

Click the "Read" button to start the reading process.

Watch the reading process progress. The adaptive reading strategy performs a systematic search for readable sectors. You will observe temporary gaps which will be closed in later stages. Usually this effect is less pronounced as shown in the screen shot. If all defective sectors are located at the end of the medium the reading process may even stop before touching the first defective sector.

The next actions depend on the outcome of the reading process. The reading process terminates automatically when enough data for a successful recovery has been gathered (compare the output marked in green). In that case continue the recovery by clicking on the "Fix" button as described below.

The reading process will also abort if it could not find enough readable sectors (see the output marked in red). The image is not yet recoverable in this incomplete state. Please try to gather additional data following the tips shown in advanced settings.

		Click the "Fix" button to begin the image recovery (works only if the above reading process stated success!).

Watch the progress of the recovery. The adaptive reading will stop as soon as enough data has been collected for a successful recovery; therefore the error correction will always be loaded to the max. This causes the display of the massive red area in the "Errors/Ecc block" graph and is no cause for worry. Depending on the medium size and your system speed the recovery may take several minutes to hours.

After the recovery finishes all data in the ISO image will be complete again.

Write the recovered ISO image to a new medium. Perform the same steps as described in the section about writing media which have been augmented with error correction data.

Now you have created a new medium containing the fully recovered data. Make sure to check it for read errors. Then you can discard the defective medium and delete the ISO image. However if you have created an error correction file for the old medium then you can keep it to protect the newly created medium.