Trying to recover some of the data on a DVD.
 

kernel 2.6.21.5, GNU (Slackware 12.0).

Hi:
I have a DVD-R labeled 16x that has been written by me in several sessions (but perhaps only one), always with an iso9660 fs, using a DVD writer whose data are these:

Vendor_info : 'LITE-ON '
Identifikation : 'DVDRW LH-20A1H '
Revision : 'LL0D'
Device seems to be: Generic mmc2 DVD-R/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM.

In spite of the last line, the drive is DVD+R compliant too. This is the only DVD drive I have and it seems unable to read that medium. Other discs, it reads them well. Before kissing the disc good bye, I would like to try all possible procedures at my disposal. The disc, by visual inspection, seems to be in a pristine condition.

When I insert it, the drive remains with the led turned on for about one minute. I tried 'cdrecord -setdropts driveropts=singlesession dev=x,x,x' to switch the drive to single session mode but with no results. I have many tools in the cdrtools package:

cdrtools:
FILE LIST:
./
usr/
usr/bin/
usr/bin/skel
usr/bin/mkzftree
usr/bin/devdump
usr/bin/scgcheck
usr/bin/mkisofs
usr/bin/btcflash
usr/bin/isovfy
usr/bin/readcd
usr/bin/isodebug
usr/bin/cdda2wav
usr/bin/cdrecord
usr/bin/isodump
usr/bin/isoinfo

Perhaps some of them would help. I also have dvd+rw-tools. Well, thanks in advance.

I would try to take an image of the disc using dd and then try mounting the image. If you have a good idea of what is on the DVD and it doesn't mount, you can try using recovery programs like testdisk, photorec, and foremost to extract the data you'd like to save.

Thank you very much. I'll do what you suggest. It was a bit stupid not to have mentioned the disk did not mount. Regards.