I'm wondering what should I do to read old DVD-R disk written 3-10 years ago.
I have to put my old data archive to a hard disk. I've tried several DVD-drives, but none of them helped me with this task. They can't see any data and treat my DVD disks as a blank ones.
It is very unlikely any DVD drive will be able to read old DVD-Rs, because the problem is in the discs, not the drives. Recordable CDs and DVDs do not use metal film like the non-recordable discs you buy, they use an organic dye that degrades over time. If your DVDs are over 10 years old they have almost certainly lost any information they ever held. This problem with recordable disc technology has long been known, especially with the older Cyanine-based dyes, which would degrade after days of exposure to UV light.
It you want to test the recording quality of a disc, try the free CDSpeed 2000 program for Windows. This program will not recover lost data; nothing can.
Those disks don't last forever, if they are really as old as you say they might have indeed wiped out, specially if they were recorded in high speed and stored in poor conditions. To have a resilient media that will last for some good years, you must always record in the lowest speed supported by your recorder, because that ensures the data will be firmly studded in the plate.
As for reading, I don't know whats the speed of the DVD readers you are using, but readers with higher speeds are more sensitive to "weak recordings" and may be more efficient to rescue your data.
