Many thanks to Peter Alling and Rob Studdert for their knowledge. My friend Barbara brought the disc around this morning and it looked worse than she'd described. A quarter inch round flake was gone, and the foil was delaminated over about a pinkie-nail sized area. Worse, it was all in the burned portion. Funnily enough Barbara had thought the darkened part of the disc was rebate and the bright silver was the data, her face fell when I told her otherwise.
Surprisingly the disc autoran to the image previewer, but then said "preview unavailable" or similar. When I opened it with Explorer all the files were visible and displayed their properties when I chose "details" as a view option. But it was too much too expect that any files could survive media damage across the whole burned area. Still, I am amazed that I got so far into it. So the warning is out there: COPY THE FILES FIRST. MESS ABOUT WITH CLEANING OR RELABELLING OF YOUR DISCS AFTERWARDS. regards, Anthony Farr
