mhoye

A note about old disc media that you might find valuable: there's a linux tool called "setcd" you can use to adjust the spin speed of your CDRom drive.

This is useful if you're recovering data from dodgy old discs; sometimes they become brittle over time and will burst at high rotation speeds. If you're using ten or twenty year old media, use "setcd -x 1" to dial the device down to as slow as it will go, then take an .iso image of the disk, loopmount it and work from that.

Aug 16, 2023 at 9:04pmWeb
Show threadSpaceLifeFormAug 16, 2023

@mhoye

Same applies when burning a CR/DVD.

The slower you burn, the more reliable the pits.

Show threadRichard "RichiH" HartmannAug 16, 2023
@mhoye any idea what drive to buy before trying to archive, or tossing, the CDs?
Show threadmhoyeAug 16, 2023
@RichiH Backblaze publishes fleet reports of drive failures every year, and my approach is pretty simple, it’s “buy two of whatever Backblaze says will live the longest that’s still for sale”.
Show threadDreaming of dad jazz.Aug 17, 2023
@mhoye @RichiH Or you can just do what I do and archive to B2 with something like restic
Show threadRichard "RichiH" HartmannAug 17, 2023
@mhoye yes, that's what I do for HDDs as well. I meant optical drives -- it seems impossible to get reliable info...
Show threadmhoyeAug 17, 2023
@RichiH Yeah, that entire space has been commodified into quasi-irrelevance now. "Use an internal drive in an old computer" is pretty much the entirety of my thought process there.
Show threadDreaming of dad jazz.Aug 16, 2023
@mhoye This is super helpful advice. I had an old scsi CDROM I used for recoveries before it died because it ran at like 4x or something instead of 16x
Show threadStewart RussellAug 16, 2023
@mhoye A CD breaking in the drive makes a really interesting sound. Not one you'd want to hear twice
Show threadJames YoungAug 17, 2023
@mhoye I'd recommend using gnu ddrescue, which lets you stop and resume. This lets you recover using multiple attempts and drives.
Show threadcesarbAug 17, 2023
@mhoye If your distro doesn't have setcd, it seems "hdparm -E 1" should do the same thing (or better, since according to comments in the hdparm source code, it also uses an alternative method for "newer DVD drives").