This data recovery software is free and developed by a Russian named Ivan Komlev. It features a friendly user interface and only three steps required to copy files from damaged CD.
- 1. Choose source drive
2. Selecting destination drive and folder
3. Copy files automatically.
Dead Disk Doctor – allows copying files from scratched or damaged CD, DVD disks, unreadable Floppy and Hard Drives or other media. It replaces lost data with random bytes reading files by expandable blocks. (Click on image to enlarge)
This software reads file by 4-16kb blocks and when hardware involves errors, the size of block decrease two times and so on until the moment when block of data will be read without any errors, or it reach minimum read size block, depending on file system, then program fills one block with random data and starts to read second one. After successfully reading data, block size increase two times again and again to reach maximum size.
I believe the text above is being translated directly from Russian to English. Whole paragraph seems a little blur to me and I find it hard to understand. From what I understand, this software will try to read the damaged media block and copy it to the specified location. For the block that is unreadable, it will replace with random data. Usually when you try to play a scratched CD, your CD player will be jumping from one track to another or will hang if it’s badly damaged. This software lets you create a new CD out of the damaged CD, so you can still play it.
The Dead Disk Doctor website says that this freeware “works excellent with Video or Audio files“. From logic, I think that’s true because you can skip a few seconds in video or audio files and you can still play it. As for data, if any part of the bytes are being replaced by random data, it will definitely corrupt the data.
Another good news is Dead Disk Doctor works on Intel Pentium 133Mhz or equivalent supporting Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP or higher with only 32Mb RAM and 7Mb free disk space on hard drive for installation. Of course you’ll be needing more disk space to recover and copy your dead disc data to your hard drive.