Data on CDs and DVDs can become unreadable like data on hard drives and other storage devices. And basically the same set of data recovery programs are available for attempting to restore the data on those optical discs. The reasons why data on CD or DVD discs become unreadable are usually different from the reasons why hard drives and other storage devices fail. The main reasons are scratches on the disc and other problems with the physical structure of the disc.

DataMiner is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to recover data from optical media such as CD or DVD. The program will analyse the data on the disc using heuristic detection algorithms. The analysis of the data on the disc is highly influenced by the type of disc, the data and the type of error that is encountered when trying to access the data.

Dataminer will analyze the whole disc, a process that can be terminated at any point. The files that have been found up to this point are then displayed in the interface. The display is basic as it will only list the file name (if it was discovered), the size, type and offset of the file on the disc.

It is possible to extract selected files or files of a certain file extension to a local storage device. Other options include a basic search to find a specific file name and saving project related information to continue working on the project at a later time. the CD and DVD data recovery software can also create and load images of physical discs which is obviously the safer way to go as it is then possible to analyze the disc image instead of the disc itself which will reduce the chance to further damage the disc.

The data recovery software is available at the Greenfish website. It is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system including Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.