"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
...
Seems a bit overkil when surely cutting the disc into pieces weither with
a cheap shredder from Argos or a large pair of shears is just as good. Who
in the world would bother to attempt to retrive data from broken cds.
Brian

If the data is worth it you can use a microscope and read the pits by eye.
It probably wont happen for a password to a bike lock but it might for a
name and address of a spy.
I dare say someone will have done software to read scanned images to make it
quicker.

You could even remove the protective lacquer and redeposit aluminium back on
the disk to make it machine readable if you wanted to spend the effort.