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["Scott G. Hall" <ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net>]

This is where a different non-Microsoft operating system and open
source comes to the rescue...

{to those of you already familiar with *IX systems the following may
seem simplistic, but there are those not so familiar with them}

1) Boot up a linux (or UnixWare or Solaris or BSD) system.  Though you
  might be tempted to use a live CD version, you will need your CD
  drive free to read the disc-to-be-recovered.  If it were me, I would
  have a spare machine around running one of the *IX's or at least
  installed as a dual-boot on my main machine.  Barring all of that,
  you can boot to a live USB-stick version.

2) Open a terminal window and get to a command-line prompt.  One of
  the universal ways to do this without going through the graphics
  screens is ALT-F1 -- almost all *IX's for Intel machines have 4
  terminals defined at ALT-F1, ALT-F2, ALT-F3 and ALT-F4.  You can
  click on a terminal window from the graphical screen as well.

3) Use the old stand-by, the "disk dump" command: dd.  This is a
  sector-by-sector copy program that includes every byte on the
  device, even any filesystems on it.  This is essentially the
  easiest way to get an 'image' of a device.  The resulting output
  file can even be "mounted" on *IX systems like it were the device.

  You need to tell it that the "input file" is the CD-RW drive that
  the disc in question is in.  Most of the *IX's provide this as a
  filename at /dev/cdrom or /dev/cdrom0.  Then you need to tell it
  the "output file" somewhere you can save the result.  This can be
  a flash card, USB drive, or the harddisk on the system.  How you
  get there will be different for each system, but the graphical
  screen will usually have a help system or browser to help you.

  A disc device has sectors sized at 512 bytes, but that will take
  a long time to copy.

  The command becomes:   dd b=512 if=/dev/cdrom0 of=/mnt/somefilename

4) Then you can play to your heart's content on the resulting image file.

SB wrote:
> I've been handed a CD-RW data recover problem. Since I don't know much 
> about this particular area I'd really appreciate suggestions on the 
> best way to tackle it. Here's what I know so far:
>
> It might also be a good idea to take a full sector-by-sector image 
> copy before I start (so I can get back to the start position for 
> another try if I mess something up) - what would be the best way to do 
> this ?

--
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net