Anyone with children has this problem – you’ve got CD/DVD’s running around the house without the protection of their jewel cases, and they’re scratched beyond belief. Disc Doctors and other physical repair tools are great for optical discs, but not for other faulty media like floppies, hard drives and flash drives.  This is the reason why I like AnyReader. It’s a must have data utility for Windows.

AnyReader copies files from scratched CD/DVD/Blu-ray or defective floppy or hard disks. When your computer is unable to copy files from a damaged disk it aborts and deletes the part of the file it has copied. AnyReader will continue copying the file right to the end. Any data that hasn’t been recovered after several retries is replaced with blanks. This will allow you to effectively read every byte of information that can be read at all for the media in question so that it can be copied to the destination of choice.

AnyReader effectively copies corrupt data from erroneous network and/or internet connections if standard copying methods fail. It supports resumed downloads from the remote server if the connection was broken during the copy process.  This is especially useful for unreliable or spotty Wi-Fi networks.

AnyReader is an awesome tool. If you’re trying to pull data off corrupt or damaged discs or media and nothing else you do seems to work, AnyReader is the type of application that can save your bacon. Its affordable and reasonably priced and is a welcomed edition to my stable of utilities.  The only real downside to the app is that it won’t work with Macs or Mac discs. This would be a stone-cold ringer if it was a multi-platform utility.

download AnyReader

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My daughter is getting married and will make a grandfather out of me this year.  I’m going to be taking a lot of digital pictures over the next few months. I’m certain of it. This is one of the biggest reasons why I really like ProShow Gold. It’s a slideshow creator for Windows.

With ProShow Gold, you can instantly create slide shows on your desktop with unlimited photos, videos & music. After they’re created, you can share them online or on your TV.  Slideshows are easily created drag and drop.  You can create unlimited slideshows with an unlimited amount of photos, videos or songs. ProShow Gold lets you tell your story the way you want.

Making use of different Wizards, you can get going in just a few clicks.  ProShow Gold has hundreds of effects, transitions, motion effects and fancy pre-made slide styles. You can use a single photo per slide, or have fun with multi-layered effects. When you’re done, you can easily share your slideshow online via Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. You can also use ProShow Gold to create DVDs, Blu-ray discs or CDs to watch on your TV or your computer.

If your photos aren’t quite up to snuff, don’t worry. ProShow Gold offers a sea of built-in editing tools. You can fix flaws on the spot with crop, auto-correct and red-eye removal tools. You can transform a color photo or video into dramatic black and white. You can even do basic video editing.

download ProShow

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Soft32 has a number of great applications for creating backup copies of the DVD’s you legally own. After you’ve made your copy, you need to label it in some way so that its identifiable. This is one of the reasons why I like Cyberlink LabelPrint. It’s a fun and easy to use optical disc labeling program for Windows.

CyberLink LabelPrint can create stunning CD and DVD labels in four quick steps. All you really need to do is select your template type, disc information, text layout, background image, and print destination. LabelPrint supports layout and printing on a broad range of templates for your CD/DVD labels.

It gets even better when you use Labelflash and LightScribe. Labelflash software and LightScribe software allow you to “etch” image designs and text onto the surface of your Labelflash and LightScribe discs. LabelPrint recognizes if a burner and disc support these technologies, and provides the option to burn to that media.

If you’re a music nut, you can work with MP3 audio files to create numbered track lists quickly by simply selecting the files you have added to your disc. The information is automatically transferred between layout templates, enabling the creation of custom CD/DVD labels, jewel-case covers and inlays all at the same time.

CyberLink LabelPrint also supports a broad range of commercial templates from leading label makers for your disc covers. A built-in library of high-resolution images provides you with choices of 16 popular themes, including Travel, Happy Birthday, and now Soccer. You can also import your own images and then edit them to fit your label and disc cover designs.

read full review | download Cyberlink LabePrint

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Making backup copies of physical media has always been a problem for many people. Many states have fair use copyright provisions for making backup copies of movies and software that are bought in the US.  Countries in the EU may have similar provisions to local and federal laws.  If you purchase a copy, the content isn’t yours, but the media is, and you’re entitled to make a backup of that content in anticipation that something may happen to the media you purchased, preventing you from enjoying the content.  This is one of the major reasons why I really like apps like DVD-Cloner. It’s an optical disk backup utility for Windows.

DVD-Cloner is a DVD ripping and backup tool that comes with it powerful functions and its fire-new one-click interface to make DVD copy easy. With new movies and related never-ending changes and improvements springing up, DVD-Cloner, as the symbolic figure in the DVD copy software industry, is designed for movie fans. It can decrypt all DVD protections for you allowing you to bring the movie home. With optimized DVD reading speed, it can finish copying a DVD just after you finish a cup of coffee.

DVD-Cloner can  decrypt all DVD protection schemes including Macrovision, AACS, CPPM, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs and RipGuard, via a block-by-block copy, whether the content is music, video or data.  It can do exact, like kind DVD-5 and DVD-9 copies. It can also copy DVD’s onto most branded DVR’s. for you to bring the cinema home.

Read full review | Download DVD-Cloner

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ISOBuster is most popular for rescuing data from damaged CDs and DVDs. The ability to retrieve lost data, particularly when it has sentimental value, like photos, or business value, like documentation is invaluable.

There is a free version with limited functionality, and a Pro version, which unlocks high-end data recovery tools. However, for most people, the functionality available in the free version is more than enough to recover data from damaged or corrupted disks. ISOBuster supports a wide range of formats and works under all the Windows versions from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

ISOBuster is a low-cost data recovery option that can restore files you thought were lost forever. It appears to be quite basic, but is very good at data recovery. Most people will find the free functionality more than enough for their needs, which also makes it very cost-effective.

read full review | download IsoBuster

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The one thing I really like about Macs is its ability to distribute software on disk images. Most software is actually distributed in downloadable disk images and run or installed right from the image. This is one reason why I really like PowerISO. It’s a disk image editing and creating tool for Windows.

PowerISO is a powerful CD/DVD/BD image file processing tool, allowing you to open, extract, burn, create, edit, compress, encrypt, split, convert and mount ISO files as internal, virtual drives. It can process almost all CD/DVD/BD image files including ISO and BIN files. PowerISO provides an all-in-one solution, allowing you to do manipulate and use your ISO and disc image files as you need.

PowerISO doesn’t just allow you to mount and use CD/DVD/BD-ROM images like any other disk your computer connects to.  It also allows you to create a DAA (Direct-Access-Archive) file, an advanced image file, which supports compression, password protection, and splitting the image to multiple volumes, if needed.  PowerISO also supports creating and editing ISO, BIN, NRG, CD file formats as well.  Creating bootable CD/DVD’s is also supported in both 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows.

Read full review | Download PowerISO

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Take complete control of your DVD and Blu-ray burning process with this great Windows application.

HD movies are awesome, but not everyone has the bandwidth to be able to stream and view home movies on the Internet. With three kids, and two of them under the age of 7, my wife and I are always taking movies of the kids for relatives who live out of state. Helping them view those movies can be a challenge, as not everyone has the level of Internet service that I do. This is why I really like Ashampoo Burning Studio. It’s a complete CD/DVD utility for Windows.

Ashampoo Burning Studio is fast, easy to use and efficient, as it handles all of your data – files, audio and video authoring tasks without sacrificing its famous ease of use. In version 10 they added a bunch of new features, but the program is still easy to use. Everything is explained to you as you do it.

The application’s main focus is its authoring capabilities for building video and audio discs. It fully supports 720p and 1080p HD video for Blu-ray discs. All the encoding is handled by Ashampoo Burning Studio. All the authoring tools have been overhauled. You now use the same new integrated editor for building DVD and Blu-ray video disks with menus.

In addition, there is a new Autoplay Editor module that you can use to build auto-starting data discs with attractive interactive menus. It also has a new Audio Player that plays audio files and audio CDs without leaving the program.

Read Full Review | Download Ashampoo Burning Studio 11

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Nero fiddled while Rome burned — but you won’t have to fiddle with Nero for long before your disc burns. But while this is a true classic in the disc burning genre, Nero Burning ROM also has some useful add-on features.

The heart of the software is its ability to create all sorts of discs: CDs, DVDs and even Blu-ray discs. Depending on the format, you can easily create audio, video or data discs, or even a combination.

As for the added features, you can do everything from password protecting a disc to automatically splitting a collection of files across multiple discs. There’s even a special writing feature that makes it much more likely you’ll be able to read or recover data even if the disc gets damaged. And for added security, there’s a built-in virus checker to make sure nothing unwanted gets on the disc.

But for all the features, usability matters. To be fair, Nero does lack some of the “quick start” features of its rivals that allow you to simply choose a common disc format and get straight to work. That’s not to say it’s an overly complicated program to use: if you can find your way round Windows Explorer without problems you should be fine with Nero.

Performance is also fine: with most modern computers you shouldn’t get any freezes or glitches while burning.

download Nero Burning ROM 11

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