CDRoller is intended to recover data from defective optical media. It supports practically every type of disc, including CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. Luckily, it can even access data from discs that were not properly finalized. Its recovery method is based on attempting to read the raw data on the media, which explains its high rate of success.
The tool has a quite intuitive interface. After you insert the disc, it guides you through the whole process. Once it identifies the original folder structure, the program lets you navigate through it and select the desired files and folders. Unfortunately, although its trial version lets you view the results of the scan and classifies them according to their possibilities of being rescued, it does not allow saving the data.
Besides its basic recovery feature, CDRoller can also do some other things. For example, it lets you burn the recovered info onto a new disc or save it as an ISO image file. Moreover, it can convert recovered VOB files into MPG video and rip audio tracks from discs. Finally, the tool also supports erasing rewritable discs.
All in all, CDRoller is definitely a great solution when it comes to rescuing the data on damaged discs. Unluckily, some benchmarking results available online report this tool as slightly less competent than the leading product in this field. However, from my personal experience, I must admit that it worked perfectly.
v10.0 [May 15, 2014]
Released a direct access to raw disk data using a special (kernel-mode) driver. This enables you to bypass the restrictions, imposed by Windows 7, 8 and Vista operating systems under standard user account. Unlike some data recovery programs, CDRoller 10 does not request administrator privileges for work with Windows drives (hard disks, flash and floppy drives, etc.) under restricted (non-administrative) account. That means you never get User Account Control (UAC) popup when you start CDRoller after installation.
UDF data recovery updated. Added the ability to separately recover each fragment (extent) of UDF file, displayed under UDF Records tab in the file Properties dialog. This can be useful, for instance, if a large UDF video file is fragmented and some damaged extents slow the recovery process.
Recover All / Recover Selected updated. Now, data recovery report lists all bad (unreadable) sectors detected for each file.
Extract To ISO Image File significantly updated. You can now create ISO image (*.iso) file not only from the entire disc (session, drive, partition) but also from the separate (selected) files and folders. As always, this option is available for optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-ray) and another types of Windows drives (flash drives, Hard Disk Drives, etc.).
Extended Data Recovery improved:
- Added an opportunity to access to the list of physical drives and their partitions. This may be useful if Windows does not display a drive as a logical one (volume) with a separate letter, but you still need to access to the lost data.
- ExFAT reader significantly updated. In addition to the recovery of files data, CDRoller now restores the lost (deleted or quick re-formatted) sub-folders on the disks (drives) with exFAT file system.
- Program Preferences updated. Added a new FAT and NTFS tab with optional settings for Extended Data Recovery.
- Removed the 24-bit limit of cluster address.
Numerous improvements, bugfixes and workarounds added.
