I have never had issues with some IDE LG CD(not CD+DVD) burners, they read everything I have and stuff they burn work fine even in (late)80s CD players, even though I didn't actually burn stuff at slowest speeds (16x is my go-to for). I primarly use it using an USB bridge, even when burning CDs. When I am back at home I'll try to get the model number of it.

I had concern when I was looking at the regular portable usb drives on their quality. So I ended up just buying a regular 5.25 sata drive, of a quality make that should read all discs and paired it with a startech sata to usb3 adapter. No issues there. You might be able to get a nice drive dock or chassis if you don't like the janky look. The drive I went with was an LG drive.

i second that, i have a bunch of cds that are not readable anymore and an lg dvd drive was able to read them
i think they went bad because of fungus or whatever happens to the layer after 30 years. i even have some burned in 1997 that cannot be read

i was thinking about doing the toothpaste method to make them more shiny but i doubt that will work

Before the obligatory preach, I've had some CD-R problems with Plextors so I can't recommend them and that's when the CD-Rs weren't even 10 years old and "rotted and hopelessly disintegrated" yet and that's when the laser hadn't worn out. Said CD-Rs still read fine on others like LGs and Liteons way later.

Thanks all, that helps a lot. Especially leileilol‘s advice against Plextor (as my usual goto would have been Plextor).
What’s the obligatory preach, though? 😉

There's a certain preservation group that holds it as the gold standard which can be misinterpreted as 'best drive ever'. They're certainly not durable from my personal experience...

Thanks!

According to my tests the best and fastest drive is the Ultima WRA-KA40. None of my drives came even close to it's access time and read speeds. I tested it with all kinds of old and scratched up discs and it worked like a charm (CD-R and CD-RW). Honorable mentions: LG GCR-8520B, LG CRD-8522B, LG GCE-8525B. Worst CD-R readers: Cyberdrive 240D and Teac CD-W552E. Biggest failure rate: Sony (2 failed out of 4) and LG (3 failed out of 10). Most stuck trays: LG (4 out of 10).
Decent performer: Plextor PX-W1210TA.

The burner I mentioned is LG GCE-8526B (version 1.03). It has definitely served me well over the years ~

lg dvd burners as a group seem to have high readability performance, but i use every optical drive at my disposal to recover marginal discs with a piece of software called isopuzzle. allows the use of map files to build a single iso image from multiple drives. i think dvdisaster does the same thing, but i've never used it.

btw, i kept all the pata/sata drives from when laptops had optical drives (new laptop pretty much every year or so for 2 decades) and use those with usb adapters.

oh, forget toothpaste. any cheap automotive scratch and swirl remover will be 10x superior at restoring optical clarity and cheaper than toothpaste by volume.

I have a Samsung sh-s223 that I'm using for old CDs. It reads everything and it's mile ahead of anything else I've tried when it comes to scratched discs. I've read online that you don't exactly need this specific model from Samsung, but in the SH-S2XX model range.

vetz wrote on 2023-11-30, 12:54:

I have a Samsung sh-s223 that I'm using for old CDs. It reads everything and it's mile ahead of anything else I've tried when it comes to scratched discs. I've read online that you don't exactly need this specific model from Samsung, but in the SH-S2XX model range.

ha, i read those same reviews and picked up this model for exactly the same purpose. i wasn't so impressed, but then years later the dvd laser burned out on it (still read cds fine) so maybe that impending failure was indicative of the middling performance i got.

I have used the IDE DVD loader mechanisms from a settop living room DVD player to read bitrotten pressed media [1]. Last time I had to read a degraded DVD-R (burned in a DVR-A04), I wasable to read it in an LG DVD burner.

My take on this is to try as many drives as possible and maybe try locking the read speed to specific lower values.

[1]

darry wrote on 2022-04-01, 06:05:

I have finally caught up my CD ripping backlog (I use DBPoweramp). As these CDs are all thrift store purchases and most of them […]
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I have finally caught up my CD ripping backlog (I use DBPoweramp). As these CDs are all thrift store purchases and most of them are 30+ years old, I believe that this qualifies as a retro activity . I have ripped over 100 CDs in the last 2 weeks, mostly while watching a movie before going to bed .

This is sometimes quite tedious as some discs are scratched and/or degraded to point of only being readable on some drives .

On that note, I will share a little "secret" of mine : one of the best drives I have found to handle marginally readable audio CDs is the disc loader mechanism from an old Norcent DP300 set-top DVD player . This player uses an IDE interface for its disc loader (this was a thing on at least some DVD players in the early 2000s, including some from the likes of Apex Digital and Arcam), so the loader mechanism can be hooked up to a PC over IDE or with an IDE to USB interface .

In my case, the loader is a DVS DSL-710A and it rocks on marginal disks . On the audio side of things, it supports C2 error reporting too . This drive has been better than any of the Plextor drives I own. The only drives that come close are my LG GCE-8527B and my Asus SBC-06D2X-U (apparently OEMed from Pioneer) .

If I ever have to deal with a hard to read data CD, I will definitely give this DVS drive a shot .

EDIT :
Full disclosure: I have several dozen CD/DVD drives and have ripped over 1700 audio CDs so far (over the last 10ish years) .

I use 15 years old Transcend USB DVD/RW drive, never had any issue with any CD

I have also had a larger amount of luck with LG drives on marginal disks. I think what it is, is that LG drives will actually slow down to read parts they can't get at full speed. You hear them do it.

Grabbing two now to see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the mention of isopuzzle and dvdisaster. More things to try 😀
Reason I ask is that I recently purchased a huge lot of Origin stuff. Among that are some CD-Rs that my drive couldn't read, for example this Beta version of the never released Crusader: No Remorse for Playstation.

Dominus wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:24:

Grabbing two now to see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the mention of isopuzzle and dvdisaster. More things to try 😀
Reason I ask is that I recently purchased a huge lot of Origin stuff. Among that are some CD-Rs that my drive couldn't read, for example this Beta version of the never released Crusader: No Remorse for Playstation.

Is that a Mitsui disk from 1996-98 ish ? I have encountered bad batches of those ?

darry wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:41:

Dominus wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:24:

Grabbing two now to see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the mention of isopuzzle and dvdisaster. More things to try 😀
Reason I ask is that I recently purchased a huge lot of Origin stuff. Among that are some CD-Rs that my drive couldn't read, for example this Beta version of the never released Crusader: No Remorse for Playstation.

Is that a Mitsui disk from 1996-98 ish ? I have encountered bad batches of those ?

It doesn't name a brand but has a PlayStation Logo, the other unreadable ones are Maxell CD-Rs

Dominus wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:44:

darry wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:41:

Dominus wrote on 2023-11-30, 15:24:

Grabbing two now to see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the mention of isopuzzle and dvdisaster. More things to try 😀
Reason I ask is that I recently purchased a huge lot of Origin stuff. Among that are some CD-Rs that my drive couldn't read, for example this Beta version of the never released Crusader: No Remorse for Playstation.

Is that a Mitsui disk from 1996-98 ish ? I have encountered bad batches of those ?

It doesn't name a brand but has a PlayStation Logo, the other unreadable ones are Maxell CD-Rs

Either way, I hope these can recovered. This has historical significance, to the point of being worth crowd sourcing to pay for professional recovery services, IMHO.

Or, at the very least, if you know someone trusted local to you with a sizable drive collection, you may want to run it by them.