Optical Media Preservation Overview
The following documents provide a comprehensive workflow for preserving optical media, including both DVDs and CDs, through a series of structured, tiered approaches. Optical media preservation presents a host of challenges, as CDs and DVDs are both susceptible to physical degradation, such as disc rot, and often include various forms of copy protection or non-standard formats. Due to these complexities, our preservation strategy uses multiple tools and techniques designed to maximize data recovery and ensure the integrity and playability of content.
Our workflows cover every stage of preservation, from creating ISO disc images to handling file structure inconsistencies, and include a range of specialized tools for each media type. Each section is tailored to address the nuances of both DVDs and CDs, such as error correction for video content on DVDs and low-level data recovery for audio CDs. By leveraging different software and hardware configurations, these documents guide users through the complete preservation process, including tool installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.