Losing important video mainly stems from
* hardware (e.g. HDD) failure
* medium malfunction (CD/DVD scratches)
* absent backup copies
To avoid this, it's recommended to make backup copies on a mobile HDD, DVD or Blu-ray. Another backup option is printing a disk copy and giving it to interested friends or relatives for you to know where it is if yours fails.
For backup copies on optical disks, you'd better use well-known brands like TDK or Verbatim with usually less spoilage. 2 copies of one video should be on different disks in case of a defective lot. After disk burning check written file integrity by copying them to an HDD or comparing them by file with special software or Total Commander's inbuilt option, Synchronize Dirs.
HDD/DVD Data Fix Software
HDDs usually have 2 problems - appearing bad sectors and electronics failure (complete breakdown). In the latter case they're impossible or complicated to fix at home. To recover data, bring it for repair or ask to copy it to another HDD if this one is unfixable.
With bad sectors springing up, be sure to backup important info immediately. If some affected your video, you can try data fix software also useful against scratched CD/DVDs.
Such software aims to read a bad sector many times. If successful, you'll get a damaged file copy but with less data loss. Relevant software includes
* ISOBuster
* H2CDImage
* ISOPuzzle
For optical disk fix, you can try to slow down disk rotation in the drive with better data fix chances. Rotation speed regulators include
* Nero Drive Speed
* CD Speed
Against CD/DVD scratches, special devices polish disks to lessen scratches and improve disk reading. Otherwise, you can polish disks with car-like aerosols and a soft cloth - better after training with an idle disk.
Video Fix Software
After repairing HDD/DVD data, use special software to get normally playable video.
To fix MPEG-1 or -2 video (their files usually have MPG or VOB extentions), you can use a free video repair tool, VirtualDub - for avi repair too. But you'll have to recode the output video to AVI. Alternatively, try AviDeMux supporting many other formats.
For AVI fix, you'd better use special software like Digital Video Repair and DivFix++. They can define damaged frames and find so-called key frames that enable fast forwarding - relevant for MPEG-4 codecs like Microsoft Mpeg-4 Codec, DivX, Xvid, etc. These AVI files are also fixable by DivXRepair.
Having problems with rarer video formats, you can always search for software at VideoHelp.com in the Tools category. Its Video Repair/Fix subcategory collects many programs for fixing various video formats.
Be sure to have several copies for valuable video storage. They can be saved on different HDDs (in-built or mobile), DVDs or other optical media, with network storages or RAID-type technology to avoid problems with local HDDs.
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