JFileRecovery is a free Java webstart application that recovers files from damaged hard drives, CDs, DVDs and Flash media very rapidly. A CRC error message appears when trying to read data from a damaged CD or DVD.

Usually the computer becomes less responsive and you hear repetitive seek noises from the drive for up to a minute.

And then, if you are using windows XP, you will encounter the following error message: "Cannot copy...

Data error (cyclic redundancy check)" CDs, DVDs and hard disks are increasingly being used for storage of music and videos.

For such multimedia a perfect copy is not always important.

Who cares about a few kilobytes of corrupt data that may only equate to one bad video frame or a fraction of a second of audio loss? Most users won't even notice the difference.

The CRC checks, however, usually make it impossible to transfer or use the corrupted file and sometimes even cause the computer to stop responding.

JFileRecovery will recover music and videos from damaged hard drives, CDs, DVDs and Flash media and usually the corrupted area will not be noticeable.

Unlike other solutions, JFileRecovery is based around the fact that reading data from damaged areas requires more time.

JFileRecovery works by sequentially reading blocks of data from a file and skipping blocks that take a long time to read.

By adjusting the block size and and time permitted to read a block (timeout), data can be read from severely damaged media.

If the file is visible within the operating system, there is a very good chance that JFileRecovery can copy the file to another location.

JFileRecovery provides the ability to retry reading from damaged areas.

A new block size and timeout can be specified in an attempt to obtain as much data from the damaged media as possible.

You can even remove media, clean it and re-reinsert between attempts.