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Even with "scratch resistant external media", I use 10% of the disc space for redundancy and recovery by using Multipar. It's a PAR2 compatible program that handles subdirectories. I've also bought but haven't used in recovery mode ISOBuster, a program that can handle the internal disc structures to try to recovery from corrupted media.

I have manually changed files and parts of files and had Multipar recover the originals; I have not yet physically scarred a CD/DVD/BR to see if it's recoverable via ISOBuster. It's supposed to work, though.

Fair (not archivable quality discs) BDs cost $0.50 for 20GB effective or $25 for 1TB, this is comparable to hard drive prices. They'll handle drops better and if one goes bad, you "only" lose that media (20G) vs terabytes. It's much slower, smaller, and write-once, though.

(OMG -- 20G is "small"?? I remember having things fit on a single 256KB 8" floppy. Much better than paper tape, though.)

> If I can turn off Joliet comprehension I'll have access to the files in their original ISO9660 8.3 glory.

Use IsoBuster. (The program is shareware, but has a free mode with less functions. The free mode is enough to access the 8.3 files)

i'm too paranoid to use stuff like this for backups.. sure 25 gigs is nice but whats the use if i just burn everything in 35 copies on the disc incase one part becomes unreadable?

as media starts to hold more, i just start creating more copies of the same backup on the disc. bluray/hdvd scares me because if it gets scratched you lose so much more than if a cd gets scratched

For those that don't know, PAR2 files are parity files that can efficiently reconstruct missing or damaged blocks in your archive. If you have more PAR2 recovery blocks than damaged blocks, then you can completely reconstruct all of the damaged files in your archive. The best newbie explanation I've seen is the "PAR & PAR2 files" section from Slyck's Guide To The Newsgroups.

If I'm backing up to a data DVD-R (capacity 4,706,074,624 bytes), I'll leave around 4GB of space for the actual data and fill the rest (to the brim) with the PAR2 files that I created for that data. I name the PAR2 files starting with the letter 'z' so that they get burned on the outer edge of the DVD. When creating the PAR2 files, I choose a block size that is a multiple of 2048 bytes because that is the block size of a DVD sector.

Some easy-to-use tools to create PAR2 files:

• Windows: QuickPar (freeware)
• OS X: MacPar deLuxe (shareware, $15)
• Linux/OS Independent (GTK): GPar2

Some DVD data recovery software (to get every readable block off a damaged disc):

• Windows: IsoBuster (recovery functions are free)
• Linux/OS X (command line): dd_rescue

Thanks, WuphonsReach.

AviSynth: Frameserver, scriptable non-linear video editing.
VirtualDub/VirtualDubMod: Video capture, linear processing. Use in conjunction with AviSynth.
Isobuster: CD/DVD data recovery
ExactAudioCopy: CD ripping even from badly scratched CDs.

• CKRename - Tool to mass rename files in a folder. Works very well for renaming MP3s.
• WinMerge (Use latest RC under beta builds) - Compare document, script, HTML, etc content versions (compares what has changed from revision to revision).
• XXCopy - Extended version of XCopy. This is a great utility for scripting file backups from one drive to another.
• ISOBuster - Open CD/DVD ISOs, BINs, IMGs, etc without having to burn them. Can extract files without burning as well.
• Vim - Improved version of the vi editor.
• IrfanView - Batch Image Processing and viewer (much like ACDSee, but FREE!).
• Diskeeper Lite - An updated version of the disk defragmenter that comes with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. This version does a better job of defragging the drive and shows you more information. The site isn't the manufacturer's, but the download does come directly from them. ExecSoft doesn't have this listed on their site anywhere anymore.
• Locate - Windows version of a linux utility. Creates a database of every file on your drives. You can then search and get instant results.
• xvi32 Hex Editor - Very nice hex editor.
• 7-Zip - A freeware file archiver. It supports all of the popular formats (ZIP, CAP, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB) as well as its own format, 7z.
• Max Lister - Create text lists of files in folders. For example, it's useful for an mp3 list.

Installation / Automation

• InnoSetup - Create your own EXE installers.
• ISTool - A GUI front-end for creating InnoSetup installer scripts.
• WinINSTALL LE 2003 - Create your own MSI installers. Also edit existing MSI installers (change options, add/remove components, etc).
• KiXtart - Advanced batch processing language. Commonly used for logon scripts but can be used to accomplish many tasks (comparable to using VBScript and WELL documented).
• AutoIt - Create scripts to send keys to applictions. Commonly used to "silently" install applictions that don't natively support silent install switches.

Multimedia Tools

It's a burden for me to drag around the CD for every game I want to play, as I do full game installs (sure, it takes up HD space, but it drastically improves performance).

For that I use the free tool ISOBuster to create an ISO, and then use DAEMON Tools (also free) to mount it as a "virtual CD" (which looks just like a CD, but it's really the ISO on my hard drive).

Then I can do the minimal install, because the additional content it reads from the "CD", it's actually getting from the hard drive! ;-)

So your laptop batteries will last much longer, since it doesn't have to spin both the hard drive and the CD-ROM; and your game will take up almost the same amount of space on your hard drive (possibly less, if the content on the CD is compressed).

The problem is not so much the fraternizing, but the fact that the installable file system interface documentation is not available to your average open source hacker. The IFS Kit costs $899 + S&H. You just can't integrate other file systems cleanly without these docs.

In fact, there are utilities to read ext2 and ISO9660 FSs, but they are stand-alone and require you to extract the files to your native partition before they can be used.

1)ISO Buster to restore corrupted CD's. Isobuster

3)Restore lost data on hard disks Google and Download.com

In case anyone is curious about the software used to view the tracks (see the screenshot on page 3 right after "Let's now see the structure of the CDS200 disc. There are 2 sessions inside:"), it's a great program called IsoBuster (www.isobuster.com) that I often use myself to verify and extract the contents of CDs and CD image files.

As described in a comment on FatChucks

(Tested it on 'Natalie Imbruglia - White Lillies Island' with a Yamaha 6x4x16x SCSI CDRW drive)

1) Get IsoBuster (A Win32 app)

2) Rip the entire disc as raw data. May struggle/take a while. Tell it to ignore any read errors

3) Open the raw file in CoolEdit (or any decent audio editor) as a 44.1Kz 16-bit stereo sample (with Intel byte ordering)

4) There you have it! The entire CD as one big sample!

5) In CoolEdit, you can use 'Edit->AutoCue->Find Phrases and Mark' to split the tracks up automatically

6) Save 'em out, and convert to MP3/Ogg if neccesssary

it's called ISOBuster. www.isobuster.com. it supports an obscene number of image formats, reads all kinds of discs... the list goes on. i'm not sure if it can mount an image as a folder or drive letter, but the guy who wrote the app has a few other utilities... maybe one of them will help too.