Data recovery from damaged CD-R

[Robotnik]

I have a data CD-R which has had about one quarter of its reflective top layer peeled off. You see there was a sticker on the disc and I went to read it on a 56X CD-ROM. At that high speed, the sticker seemed to be unbalancing the disc (the last time I read it was in an 8X drive a while back). I went to peel off the sticker and part of the top layer of the CD-R peeled off with it. Anyway, do you guys have any suggestions to recover the data on this disc? Some service maybe? About one quater of the disc is now see through.

[cfitz]

I'm afraid this case is hopeless. Sorry.

In the future if you run into such a problem, use Nero's drive speed to limit the speed at which you read the disc to a low speed, extract all the information from it, and then burn a new copy.

cfitz

[Halc]

I'd also like to know if anybody has succeeded in reflective layer repair. All the information on the web I've read says that it's near (if not totally) impossible, due to the problems of getting a new uniform reflective layer on the disc. And this presupposes that the dye layer has not been damaged.

So, unless I hear about practical tests that prove otherwise, I'm afraid that cfitz is right and there is no hope :(

regards,
Halcyon