Extract from
MacInTouch:
"Toast 8 introduces a new "Disc Recovery" option for making disc copies. Intended for scratched discs, Toast runs the optical drive in a data recovery mode, in which it "gracefully recovers" from errors then attempt to re-read damaged sectors. If it can't recover the damage, Toast recovers the surrounding data and presents you with a recovered file incorporating an empty segment – a very reasonable best effort. Upon completion, Toast provides a report of disc damage and recovery notes.
Roxio warns that a damaged disc can take a long time to recover, depending on how damaged it is, and our experience (with intentionally damaged discs) bore this out. Once the Toast reached the damaged portions of the discs, it slowed down tremendously.
CDs are fairly resilient by nature, although their top surface, where the data actually resides, is more vulnerable than the bottom. Cheap CD/DVD media is particularly vulnerable; not all manufacturers put a protective top layer of plastic over the recording layer.
Our first test was to put a deep scratch in a Toast-burned Photo Disc with a scissor blade; this didn't slow down Toast at all. When we played this disc's slideshow, it had pauses of a few seconds before displaying some images, but all of the data appeared intact. We next tried drawing a line with a fine point Sharpie marker, and that didn't slow down Toast either – or Disk Utility.
It wasn't until we made a thick line with a marker that we finally caused trouble. Recovering this damaged disc (with about 280 MB of data) took a couple hours.
Roxio notes that Toast cannot recover all discs. If the disc's table of contents, on the innermost ring of the disc, is damaged, then Mac OS X will eject the disc before Toast gets a chance to try to read it. And some damage is simply too extensive to recover.
Toast data recovery, Roxio says, works best for audio and video files which can be used even when only partial data is available. MP3 and AAC files we recovered from our test CD sound like they "skipped" or had audible glitches where data was unrecoverable. Most were listenable, except for one track with dozens of sector errors.
This is far better than 100% data loss, and we welcome this new feature. For most people, it will be far more cost effective than the services of specialized data recovery firms such as Drive Savers."
Now, if Roxio could just get their customer support to improve.
