[katnapz]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

Even with a ruined disc, it should be able to see that there's something on there, no?

I don't know for certain, but I think you'd be able to at least see that much. Some recovery programs can just go in and "rip" whatever is on the disc out. I used a program like that once on a bad harddrive. The file structure had gone completely bad and the computer just couldn't find anything. If there are bad sectors scattered across the disc (and assuming you can eventually read the disc), it'll probably be like back when you'd fool Windows 95/98 into defraging a floppy that would go bad. Windows would ask if you wanted it to fix what it could and you'd say yes....afterwards you might be able to pull up that Word document or picture, but there's be errors in some like gobblygook lettering or part of the picture would be corrupted. I'm not sure how that would effect the integrity of your music

There "could" be a different way to work this if things don't work out with a different drive/computer. It's a real pain in the butt because there's a lot of prep work that has to be done (i.e., steep learning curve and I haven't messed with the below for months now), but it depends on how desperate you are. You'd need tow optical drives. I managed to pull info off a completely hosed harddrive once doing it, but I don't know off the top of my head if you can access a DVD drive (think you can...pretty sure you can actually). Try googling BART PE if you're interested. In a nutshell, you'd be setting up an OS that would run off your optical drive (no hard drive is required). It uses different drivers to access your optical drives and it's possible that could allow you to access the disc, but I'll be honest and say now that it's a slim chance. On a side note, once you set the disc up, you can amaze your friends running a computer from a CD/DVD (look ma, no hard drive).