Have you ever come across a stubborn data CD that just refuses to copy? Even creating an ISO image was failing - both in windows and linux. The Windows PC was not even recognizing the CD, on both Optical Drives!
Had to use a unique combination to recover/copy this data using Linux and some handy commands.
0. Mount CD into drive.
1. Navigate to the CD and copy the data
cp -r /media/* /path/to/copied/files
2. Compare the Original and the copy for any differences
diff -qr /media/ /path/to/copied/files
Got no errors this time, but in case any differences are found, it should be as simple as navigating to the source file and copying it to the backup directory.
Being on ancient hardware meant that this Linux machine did not have a CD burner. The files were copied to a Windows PC to burn onto CD.
Success!
-n
