recover/repair .iso files

[technical]

I'm looking for a way to repair or recover reconstructed .iso files. I had a Lacie 1TB drive, with about 900Gb used, that suddenly the system wouldn't recognize. I got a second 1TB drive, and scanned the troubled drive with DataRescue PC, the recovery software Lacie recommended. It read the corrupted drive and listed all the recoverable files, rating their health and likely success of recovery. I selected the "excellent" files (all but about 10 Gb looked fully recoverable), and recovered them to the new drive. It all seemed to work flawlessly, (it took 2 days to scan and two days to recover). I'm working in Windows XP Pro on a Dell Precision 470 workstation.

Now I'm trying to use the recovered files (specifically ".iso" DVD disk images of DVDS I've created of archived shows produced here at my theater) and the burning software (Nero or ImgBurn) doesn't recognize the .iso as a valid file. I get error messages that say "UDF achor tag ID is incorrect" and "block length incorrect for program length". In the rewrite process something has changed in the file identifiers (I'm guessing?). This is why I'm here posting. What happened and is there a way to correct and use the .iso files again?

These .iso files are the whole point of my data recovery effort. I'm getting really frustrated with this recovery process - I've been struggling with it since February and every try takes days. So far no progress. At some point I'll have to cut my losses, reformat both drives, and get on with my work. Any insights, educated guesses, further resources to recommend? Thanks.

[setarip_old]

Hi!

1) Try using (freeware) "IMGBurn" instead of "NERO"

2) If that doesn't work, try mounting the .ISOs with Daemon Tools and resaving them

[cwl7454]

@technical,

It would appear that setarip did not read your post in it's entirety in regards to imgburn.

Virtural Clone Drive is a freeware and is very good, if you don't have it, download it and install it. Try mounting one of your recaptured iso's to the virtual drive and see if it will play back.

:search:

Also you might giving this link a try for some helpful info;just copy and paste

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19902527-getting-vob-onto-disc-to-play-in-standalone-player

[technical]

I used virtual clonedrive (cool app) to try to mount a recovered .ISO file. It works great on .ISOs from other drives, but the ones from the "recovered" bunch are not recognized as valid files. Any ISO editors that could recode, or modify tags, or otherwise tweak these files back to life?

[laserfan]

I would suggest you visit the ImgBurn support forum and ask over there. LightningUK (the author & chief moderator) knows everything there is to know about this stuff I think!

You will need to include the output log from ImgBurn, with exact error messages therein of course, when you make your post. Good luck!

BTW an obvious question I must ask: don't you have ANY actual burned DVDs of these shows you made at your theater???

[technical]

Well, yes, I do actually have most of these images hard copied. Thanks. I'm still after the few I don't.

[AVIL]

Hi,

You can try cdmage (free):

http://cdmage.orconhosting.net.nz/frames.html

but, it seems that your iso files are very corrupted. Try to recover again with testdisk/photorec

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

good luck

[FillHy]

Hm...I think you should try Advanced File Recovery (http://www.advanced-file-recovery.com/). It's a really quality piece of software. I am not sure, but maybe it can solve your problem.

[iffybob]

This might sound daft but.... Will not WINRAR open the ISO file and read it, at lesat it may identify any damaged sections of the file if that is the problem.

At worst you could extract the files and recompose an ISO :)

[von_Runkel]

If you haven't formatted the original, faulty drive yet or any of the recovery tools you have tried further have corrupted the data, I would give this method a try:

If you have access to a Linux box, try to mount the HDD there and (with a little luck) you can either copy the iso files directly or mount the iso's individually and copy the content of the iso's to another disk. If you don't have access to a Linux computer, you can download a Live CD which is just the fundamentals to boot up a Linux OS without touching your current system. Popular Live CD's are Knoppix, Ubuntu and Fedora. Especially Knoppix has good reputation of being able to recover failed disks or file systems. The Live CD includes some recovery tools. Google search 'file recovery knoppix' for further reading.

Recently, I rescued content of two very old Apple SCSI hard drives this way. No other system I tried (including several versions of the Macintosh OS) were able to read any of the drive's content since the allocation tables were corrupt (as I was told). I knew that the file system was Apple HFS and forced a HFS mount (auto mount did not work). The partitions was suddenly readable again and I could copy the data to a safe place.

Remember to never keep original data on a portable drive. They are very unreliable and tend to fail more often compared to drives properly mounted in a computer cabinet. This increased failure rate probably comes from improper handling (when the drive is spinning it should never be moved around) and the fact that the media itself is removable (giving more file system errors due to improper unmounts/ejects).