CD/DVD has little to no scratches but it still won't play or be recognized by my laptop. What could be the problem?

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Woodstock
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Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: CD/DVD has little to no scratches but it still won't play or be recognized by my laptop. What could be the problem?

Post by Woodstock »

Is it a DVD with movies on it, or actually created as a Digital Video Disk (playable in a DVD player)?

What errors are you getting?

If you get "No disk", the drive cannot find a recognizable format on it. I haven't done the "leave in sunlight a lot" treatment, but remember that recordable disks are written by using light to affect the dyes in the recording layer, and sunlight contains the same wavelengths of the lasers used to precisely write those data bits, without the focus.
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clenchdwarf
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:12 am

Re: CD/DVD has little to no scratches but it still won't play or be recognized by my laptop. What could be the problem?

Post by clenchdwarf »

Try every other DVD reader at your disposal. That includes the junk computers in the basement or closet, and the stack of old drives under the kitchen table (everyone has that, right?). Maybe it's just a compatibility issue with the drive on the laptop, or you'll find that one drive is a bit more gifted at reading marginal discs. I've encountered Toshiba laptop drives that simply wouldn't read dual layer Ritek discs.
DVDs are extraordinarily resistant to scratches; I've backed up hundreds of rental and library discs (and some from the recycling yard) that all ripped perfectly despite looking horrible. It generally takes severe physical damage like a dent or crack to make a DVD unreadable. Admittedly, I do have one go-to DVD drive that is better than others at reading marginal discs, though I mainly have to use it for bad CDs.
Finally, it could just be that being exposed to sunlight has damaged the disc, or it was poor quality media, or bad from the beginning if you didn't do a verify or compare after burning (everyone does that, right?). In which case... maybe some disc recovery software (like "Nero Rescue Agent" or "Isobuster") could copy as much as possible, and you might find that there are only a couple of minor glitches in the video. If this disc is authored as a DVD, maybe a hardware DVD player will be more tolerant of errors and play it reasonably well, and then you could just recapture the analog video.
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