Hi,
I have two DVD's recovered which appear to be blank.
However these DVD's were hidden in such a way that you would think someone had a reason too and also had writing on which makes me think they contain data.
When I put them in a DVD drive, they show as blank, tried 3 different OS (Win7, Win XP and Ubunutu) and 4 different DVD drives.
However FTK is unable to read the drive as is WinHex / X-ways.
I'm wondering if these could be encrypted or created by a program which "hides" the DVD's as blank.
Does anyone have any experience/thoughts on this?
Do they look like they have data written to them? It should be physically visible on the disc, they will slightly change colour where the data has been written.
Sorry missed that out of original post. There is no color change along the disk, so I'd guess either completely empty or completely written.
You should be able to compare the colour to a blank DVD and see if its the same (obviously make sure they are close as possible to the same disc make etc)
My other suggestion would be to try a tool that tells you about the physical make up of the disc. For example, ImgBurn has a discovery mode that shows you information like the amount of sectors written to on the disc. See example below;
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH40N NV02 (ATA)
Current Profile DVD+RDisc Information
Status Incomplete
State of Last Session Empty
Erasable No
Sessions 2
Sectors 1,480,272
Size 3,031,597,056 bytes
Time 3285872 (MMSSFF)
Free Sectors 812,784
Free Space 1,664,581,632 bytes
Free Time 1803909 (MMSSFF)
Next Writable Address 1482320
Supported Write Speeds 4x, 8x, 12x, 16x
Are they DVD-R or DVD-RW?
I have seen DVD-RW that when viewed in a normal DVD drive show every sector as zeros. However, in a modified drive I could recover the information.
A quick erased DVD-RW will display as blank - and this can be viewed only with special hardware.
There is no color change along the disk, so I'd guess either completely empty or completely written.
Even if it was completely full, there should still be a colour change near the center and outside rim compared to a blank disk.
Also in the clear plastic inner ring in a micro-font you might find some details as to who made the disk (if it isn't obvious from the other writing on the disc).
However, in a modified drive I could recover the information.
A quick erased DVD-RW will display as blank - and this can be viewed only with special hardware.
What do you mean by modified drive? They are DVD-R, but it's still probably worth a look at.
As Passmark said, normally it is very clear how full a DVD is, though there are some DVDs that look the same written and blank.
As the DVD looks and acts as blank, and is a DVD-R I would not suspect that the data has been hidden intentionally. If programs such as Isobuster will not see any signs of data, then I doubt that someone hiding data would beable to see any data either.
minime2k9 please check your PM