I got a DVD, never used with cellophane intact, produced in 1993 on ebay. I thought maybe, since I didn’t get a DRM warning, it predated DRM, and I could just copy it to my hard drive, so I did. Both the copy and the DVD are now corrupted and unplayable. I want to fix the DVD then rip it to my hard drive. Googling gives plenty of suggestions for ripping but none for fixing. Please help if you can. Thanks.
On closer examination, the performance is from 1993. Discogs shows a 2005 release, and Presto Music seems to be selling a version that says it was released 29th Jul 2013. The back cover of the container I have says copyright 1993. I played it before trying to copy it. VLC is the only app I have that recognized it. Pot Player and Windows Media did not.
You need to try an actual DVD player software like PowerDVD, or standalone home theater DVD player before you write the disc off as bad. Attempting to copy a DVD to your PC literally cannot damage the disc. The disc wasn’t written by a laser, it was pressed by a mold, much like a vinyl record is made. Your reader can’t possibly alter it.
I’m sure you’re more technically knowledgeable than I am b/c most people here are. But I tell you for sure though that my copying the contents of a DVD to PC using File Explorer resulted in an unplayable DVD twice. It’s fixable. I’m bookmarking this in case I forget what a mess this causes and do it again. I’d be interested to know the result if you try it to prove me wrong.
Windows? Yeah, I’m talking out of my ass here, but probably only unplayable because Windows helpfully created some kinda corrupted data file related to the disc.
What he said is factual; you didn’t make the disc itself unreadable. Which is why I blame Windows doing something stupid and not helpful.
I don’t have any background knowledge to confirm this, but this seems like the extremely likely answer. Unfortunately.