I have a collection of DVDs and CDs that I’ve been meaning to archive. However, most of them must be scratched because whenever I try to read them, they get an I/O error in a random spot of one of the 1gb files. I heard that you can do some magic with ddrescue and possibly even read them in reverse, but don’t know the limitations of that when it comes to USB DVD readers. How can I copy these reliably?
The time frame is mostly to avoid some annoying firmware locks on the drive. Also, that Dell drive is probably a Hitachi or a Liteon rebrand, they don’t make drives themselves. It shouldn’t matter much for reads, both manufacturers have good and bad drives.
All that being said give it a shot, worse case you still get read errors and you are back to square one.