
==================   ISO PUZZLE 1.4   ==================

Data recovery utility for damaged / scratched DVDs and data CDs

This version of ISO PUZZLE is supplied "as is" free of charge for personal 
non-profit use only.

If You like to make a donation please make it payable to my email address 
via "PayPal"!

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN READING TO THE END AND ACCEPT THE TERMS OF USE!

! YOU ARE USING THIS PROGRAM ON YOUR OWN RISK !
===============================================
By using this program You accept, that no warranty of any kind can be given.
Neither functionality nor data integrity can be guaranteed.
The author cannot guarantee that this program is free of viruses, trojans,
spyware or any other harmful software.
The author cannot held responsible for malfunctions, data loss of any kind, 
corruption of any other software installed on Your machine, permanent 
hardware damages or profit loss.

! THIS PROGRAM IS NOT INTENDED TO CIRCUMVENT ANY COPY PROTECTION !
==================================================================
Although in some countries it is legal to make backup copies of legally
purchased material like software or movies, only the user is responsible of
respecting the applicable law.
The author cannot held responsible for copyright infringements.
This program has no decryption mechanism and has not been tested for running 
in parallel with software players or programs bypassing region code protection
and/or decryption on driver level.

! USE AND DISTRIBUTION !
========================
You are permitted to share and copy this program together with this ReadMe in
unmodified form to other persons or to host it on Your servers as long as no 
fee is charged. Using it for making any kind of profit, every modification or 
reverse engineering is prohibited.

!!! IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS TERMS OF USE OR IF YOU CANNOT 
AGREE TO THEM YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE THIS PROGRAM !!!
==============================================================

Short Description:
==================
The goal of this program is to recover as much as possible data of damaged, 
bad burned or scratched CDs or DVDs.

This version supports only data CDs and DVDs with sectorsize of 2048 byte.
Audio CD, VCD and SVCD are not supported.

You need a working ASPI Layer on Your system!
=============================================
This program has been tested with the newest version of WNASPI32.DLL of 
NERO AG (Version 2.0.1.74).
Please visit the homepage of NERO AG to get the DLL and read the terms 
of use!
http://www.nero.com/nero6/eng/WNASPI32.DLL.html 

Please put the WNASPI32.dll together to Your IsoPuzzle.exe folder - do not 
copy it into Your system folders. Please note, that the behaviour of this 
program may depend on this dll.

How it works:
=============
All readable data is stored in an "ISO" image file which can be read by
various software such as "Daemon Tools", "WinRar" (needs iso-plugin) and most
burner software like "Nero" etc.
Please note, that image files greater 4GB need to reside on a NTFS disk!

Every succsessfully read sector is stored in the image file (*.ISO) and will
be marked "good" in the corresponding "flag" file (*.FLG).
If a read error is encountered a dummy sector will be written which will 
remain marked "bad". In this case a random number of sectors are skipped for
faster progress.
Reaching the end of the disk a retry loop will be entered until all sectors 
have been read or a selectable "Give Up Time" has been reached.

After selecting the "Source" drive and the "Destination" folder the copy 
process can be started by pressing "Start".
The filenames are suggested automatically from the DVDs volume label if available.

The copy process can be interrupted at any time by pressing the "Pause" 
button and can be continued by pressing "Start" again.
This way You can try to complete Your image file even on different machines
with different CD drives - often one drive can read some sectors which are
unreadable for an other one.

For using different drives You can share the image file *.ISO (together with
the flag file *.FLG) on a network drive or put it on a portable disk (USB).

Import function:
================
To avoid dealing with very large files You can use the "Import" function:
Assuming that You started on machine "A" and no more data comes from Your DVD.
.) Copy ONLY (!) the *.FLG file (e.g. via USB stick) to machine "B".
.) On "B" select "Destination" folder, where the *.FLG is located.
.) "Start" will create an "import file" *.IMP in the same folder. 
    All readable sectors are now stored here.
.) After completion on "B" transfer the *.IMP to a location where it is 
    accessible from machine "A".
.) On "A" it can be merged into the existing *.ISO image with "Import File"

Force Disksize - WARNING - Use with care!
=========================================
.) Some DVD drives report slightly different size of the same DVD/CD.
    For ripping to an existing *.Iso/*Flg pair (or *.Imp/*.Flg) You can set
    the disk size to "Flagfile reported".
    (You can try "Estimated" to get out, which drive is wrong ...)
.) In some cases "empty disk" is reported although the disk is readable.
    Setting the size to "Estimated" would be the choice here.
    This function may be slow and unreliable.

Be careful and be sure You know what You are doing when using this function!!!
By changing the (drive reported) disk size You might accidentially destroy
an existing image file - make sure the given filenames are correct!

Cylce Tray 
==========
It your responsibility NOT to change the disk while the tray is open!

History:
========
1.4 Added options: Cycle tray on multiple errors, Select iso-filename,
     Force disksize (solves "different sectornumber" and "empty disk")
1.3 Progressbar & other cosmetics
1.2 Crash on missing host-adapter-0 fixed
1.1 A few bugs corrected
1.0 First release

Credits:
========
If You like to make a donation please make it payable to my email address 
via "PayPal"!

mailto:Marsoupilamis@Yahoo.Gr
http://www.geocities.com/marsoupilamis/