Optical Drive Lock Problem

[JoeFlaPiriform]

I am having a problem using Recuva.

I keep getting an error message:

"Unable to lock selected drive.  Close all applications
 that may be using this drive and retry.

 My system is a dual boot desktop, Windows 7 Pro and Linux Mint.
 
 Installed Recuva in the Windows OS.
 
 I am trying to recover some images (mostly jpg) on several defective CDs and DVDs.
 
 I open Recuva and I am able to select the optical drive (E in my case because of some other hardfile partitions).
 
 I click the "Scan" button, and the scan begins and finds files on the disc.
 
 I click to select all of the files to be recovered, and click the "Recover" button.
 
 I then get the error message above.  This is repeatable.
 
 Once I get the error message, I can no longer see the optical drive in Windows Explore, nor in Recuva.  A system reboot is necessary.
 
 No other application are running on the system.  I have disable Dropbox and Norton Antivirus to no avail.  There are many "Processes" and "Services" running in Task Manager.  But, I do not recognize which one might be causing the lock problem.
 
 Your assistance and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[mta]

I wasn't aware that Recuva could recover from CD's/DVD's.

 

this is out of the Recuva documentation; http://www.piriform.com/docs/recuva/introducing-recuva/why-use-recuva

in particular, para 4.

[Andavari]

It doesn't work on optical media.

[hazelnut]

May be worth giving Roadkill's Unstopable Copier a try. It can copy files from defective dvd/cd's.

 

Would at least get you something to try and work with. At this stage anything is worth a try.

 

Select OS from download dropdown.

 

When you have downloaded, select CD drive as source then select the target where you want to put the CD/DVD files and press copy.

 

http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

[Augeas]

Recuva does - or it did - recover optical drives. I tried this shortly after the option came out and it worked well. What I couldn't really grasp was why anyone would want to recover from a cd/dvd, you can't delete anything accidentally.

 

I've just tested it again and Recuva does scan and recover from optical droves. Yes, I do have cd's with deleted files on them.

 

Although this may be so I think that expecting 'defective CDs and DVDs' to be readable is perhaps optimistic.

[mta]

out of curiousity @Augeas, were the CD's CD-RW or just CD-R?

and if -RW, were they 'finalised'?

[Augeas]

CD-R and not finalised. I dumped backup data on them and then discovered I'd dumped a file I didn't want backing up, so I added another file and deleted the unwanted file (the cd writing software I use, Ashampoo, doesn't let you delete a file on it's own, I don't know if all s/ware does this). I think the whole lot is rewritten with the new file added and the old file removed, but I'm not sure. It might just rewrite the session header.

[Andavari]

That type of CD authoring doesn't actually delete the file (it's still consuming disc space) from what I remember ages ago using an old Adaptec CD burning program.

 

As for needing to recover files from optical media - the reason is they (especially CD-R's in a few short years) can go bad with unreadable bad sectors/spots from scratches, dust, etc., or someone used a crappy media or crappy burning software which will cause Windows to pop-up a CRC error dialog. Although I've never had a DVD-R/DVD+R go bad.

 

When that happens with optical media recovery is usually not successful, which is one reason in my burning software I enable all filesystems to be burned for data discs UDF, Joliet, Rockridge (I enable UDF on CD-R's too), etc., since one of the filesystems "may" be able to recover the data when another fails. One particular software which I can't remember the name of anymore would check all of the filesystems to see if it could recover files off a bad CD-R.

[Augeas]

I know that a file can't actually be deleted from a CD, deleting them hides them from the standard display you get with Explorer, and there's not a lot of software around that reads deleted files on cd/dvd's.

 

If the cd is damaged, which is another case entirely, then if the disk can't be read I can't see what Recuva or anything can do. If you can't read it physically you can't read it full stop.

 

After all if  you could read the disk then you wouldn't be fiddling about with Recuva, would you?

[Andavari]

Thing is with a multi-filesystem disc some software may be able to recover a file. Best practice from back in the day when I participated on audio forums was the recommendation of using PAR when burning discs, for reference see the description of QuickPar's PAR2.

[JoeFlaPiriform]

I would like to thank all of the people who responded to my posting.

From the responses, I think I should be able to use Recuva to try to recover files on a scratched or damaged  CD or DVD.

However, nobody has suggested how to resolve my lock problem.

Recuva recognizes the optical drive (E in my case), and lists the files it can see on the disc.  But, when I try to recover the files, I get the "Unable to lock selected device" error message.  No other application is running in Task Manager, but many processes and services are running.  And, once I get the error message, Recuva no longer can see the optical drive, nor Windows Explorer.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to identify the process or service that is preventing the device lock?

Again thank you for your assistance and suggestions.
 

[Augeas]

Recuva is a tool for recovering deleted files (although it will list live files) and you don't have any deleted files. It asks the file system to read the device, it doesn't, and can't, start reading alternate blocks or error coding or whatever. As I said if you could read the disk you wouldn't be using Recuva. In other words Recuva doesn't work miracles.

 

What happens when you use Explorer to read the disks?

 

What sort of damage is on the disks? Can it be polished out?

[Andavari]

Try to open in Explorer as Augeas suggested, that way if Windows can't read the disc it will pop-up a 'Cyclic redundancy check' error dialog, then you'll know to clean the disc to remove possible dust, skin oils, etc., from it.

 

Also in some cases CD burning software may be able to copy the disc.