On Sun, 30 May 2004 12:17:51 +0530 jtd jtdsouza@softhome.net wrote:
AFAIK (read this with a pinch of salt) if the first TOC is damaged u cant recover as the end of session location cannot be found and hence the next toc. In a multisession the last toc is the merge of all the previous toc. If the disk has defects the last toc gets corrupt, but (ususally) the earlier tocs are ok and hence recovery is possible. Also files are written as one single track (track size +padding >= sizeof (file1+file2+..filen)). Thus there is no way of recovering files without knowing their sizes.
The CD was written in 4 different sessions, with only the last one failing. Thus the TOC of the first three sessions should be readable in the Lead-in of the 3rd session. But the trouble is the driver does not detect the CD in the drive because it tries to read the TOC from the failed lead-in of the 4th session, and the 'open' fails.
What would be helpful is some way of overriding default cdrom driver behavior. Kernel tinkering seems to be the only way.
Apparently, the only software I have found which overrides the temptation to believe that there is no CD in the drive is a Windows software called BadCopy. I could recover some files using that, but not many.
What software did u use to record the cd?
Nero ! ( I have driver problems with my writer in Linux on my laptop).
PS : BadCopy Pro has a unique 'Mode 2' wherein it just tries to read anything in the drive, regardless of whether there's anything in the drive or not. I could not find this feature in any other software. Is there any Linux CD recovery software at all ?