Damaged Discs or Floppies

Note: Sierra no longer has anymore replacement discs or floppies for most of these old games, so the following may no longer be relevant. It is mostly included for its historical value. See below for repair options.

"Sierra replacement disks:
Replacement is FREE for the first 90 days of product ownership. After 90 days there is a $10.00 handling fee per program for replacement. You must send in your payment at the time of order. For the fastest service, mail your defective CD along with either a copy of your sales receipt dated within 90 days or the $10.00 handling fee. In that note, Sierra also requests that you include your name, address, and daytime telephone number so our Customer Service Representatives may contact you should the need arise. The address is: Vivendi Universal Interactive Attn: Disk Replacement 4247 S. Minnewawa Avenue Fresno, CA 93725 NOTE: If you are missing the CD but trying to obtain a CD replacement, you can provide us with a photocopy of your receipt with the title of the product clearly listed, front page of manual or jewel case instead of sending in the CD. Also please note, we do not have replacements for 3.5" or 5.25" disks."

Unfortunately, with the attrition of time, these precious discs and floppies can become corrupt, damaged or even lost. What can be done? The obvious solution is to track down a new copy on ebay or other auction or trading site. But some of these classics can be hard to find, or expensive. Can these damaged disks be recovered? The answer is maybe.

Caution! cracked CDs can shatter while being read in your CD drive. The flying projectiles can severely damage your drive.

Corrupted data on an old floppy might be salvageable with a data recovery program such as EasyRecovery DataRecovery. While data on a CD might be more secure, physical damage to the disc can occur. CDs are an optical medium and if the surface becomes scratched or abraded, they may become unreadable. While attempting to read a damaged CD, your game might Lockup, Windows may become unresponsive or the game might give you errors that it can't find some of its resources.

If the data is at all readable, copy it to your harddrive and burn a new copy of it. If this can't be done, you might try repairing the disc. There are various CD scratch removal kits on the market (check the various computer, electronics or music stores.) You might also check into some services that repair scratched discs.

Lastly, you might ask for replacements for unrecoverable files from your fellow gamers on the various gaming message boards. Just don't ask on Sierra's boards, as these old games are still under copyright.

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