Old CD (2010) disk with images no longer readable. Fixable?

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Level 1

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Old CD (2010) disk with images no longer readable. Fixable?

I'm on an iMac running 15.6.1. I have many Dover Clip Art books that include CDs of the art in the books and now find myself in need of this art. The books are obviously old: ©2006, ©2009, etc. I tried mounting using Disc Repair with no luck. I tried contacting Dover who told me the books are out of print and images are no longer available. Is there a way to get these images off old CDs? If not by myself, then by a service bureau perhaps? My husband uses a Dell computer and I will try to see if perhaps he can read the disks, but your help and advice would be appreciated. Thanks so much.

iMac 27″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Nov 3, 2025 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

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Servant of Cats

Level 7

33,419 points

Nov 3, 2025 6:13 PM in response to cat00x

This may be an issue of the filesystem on the CDs.

Old Mac CDs often used the HFS (no "+") filesystem – either alone, or in combination with another filesystem that Windows could read. Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") dropped support for creating and writing to HFS ("no +") volumes – but read-only support remained until the introduction of macOS 10.15 (Catalina).

Catalina dropped all support for the HFS (no "+") filesystem. So if you try to read a CD that uses HFS ("no +") on a Mac that is running Catalina or later, the Mac will reject the disc. It will reportedly reject the disc even when the CD is a "hybrid" disc and the Mac would be willing to read the "PC" filesystem if it was the only one.

If this is the issue, you may have better luck reading the CDs on a Windows PC than on a modern Mac.

If the discs are hybrid discs, the PC should be able to read them. Then maybe you could copy their contents to a drive formatted using exFAT (which Windows and macOS both know how to handle).
If the discs are HFS-only discs, the PC won't be able to read them – unless, possibly, you purchased a third-party utility such as MacDrive . (Caveat: If you are thinking of doing that, check with OWC to see if it supports HFS (no "+") filesystems. It might just support the newer HFS+ and APFS ones, which wouldn't help with this problem.)

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Answer 2

cat00x Author

Level 1

10 points

Nov 5, 2025 1:20 PM in response to Allan Jones

I have an Asus external CD drive, manufactured 2014. My husband's Dell does read the disks, so I do have a solution, but this is problematic. I guess the lesson is, copy off of CDs as soon as you get them on to a different drive?

Thanks to all who answered. I appreciate your presence and your help.

Catherine

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Answer 3

Allan Jones

Level 9

77,588 points

Nov 3, 2025 5:35 PM in response to cat00x

What kind of optical disk drive are you using on your iMac? Some are not reliable and may report a disk as unreadable with they are perfectly fine.

Are the disks 'burned" or "pressed." Pressed disks are the kind that commercial apps and music used to come on. 'Burned" are those duplicated on a simple CD/DVD burner in or attached to a home computer.

Burned disks are not stable. They read a series hole burned into a thin coating. After 15 years the coatings can degrade, become brittle and fall off.

If you have an external optical drive on the iMac, I would definitely try the one on the Dell if it is internal.

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Answer 4

John Galt

Level 10

154,850 points

Nov 3, 2025 5:39 PM in response to cat00x

Maybe, but a CD that old may have been designed for pre-Intel Macs, which date back to about that time. Your much newer iMac is not likely to recognize their format.

There are a variety of other reasons they cannot be read, so I wouldn't give up on them.

See what your husband's PC can do with them. If it can read those CDs then transferring the images they contain ought to be a simple matter of copying them to a flash drive, etc.

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