Help, lost photos??

[denachtenmai]

Has anyone experienced this before?
I have a CD full of pics, I wanted to put them on my wife's new laptop, they showed ok originally but when I went to import them it looks as if they have disappeared, the only thing is, the properties shown for the disc do not make sense.
The pie shows used space as full but reads 0 bytes ??
the pie shows free space as 0 bytes
and capacity as 0 bytes ??
Have tried it in mine with the same result.
I'm at a total loss, does anyone have any ideas please.
Regards, Den.

[vulcanised]

Sounds as if the laptop has an issue with the CD.

Try rebooting the laptop and while that's happening have a look at the CD surface before you try it again.

[dazdaz1]

I would guess there is some compatibility issues with the CD. e.g CD R/RW+ CD R/RW- Best check the manual of the machine. A lot of them don't handle both R/RW+ and R/RW- formats.

Daz

[denachtenmai]

Already tried that vulcanized, also I have 2 identical discs one of which loaded perfectly, and one that throws up the aformentioned problem, I have also tried Recuva but that won't look at a cd
Regards, Den.

[green granite]

Not something silly such as the disc's not finalised is it?

[denachtenmai]

Probably not because originally they came up, in fact my wife and I went through them on her computer but then, stupidly, as it so often happens with me I shut down to do something else (gardening) thinking I'd import them later, the result was as documented
Regards, Den.
PS also tried CD Recovery Toolbox and that doesn't recognise the disc either.

[lomapaseo]

If you put the disc back in your wife's computer do the photos show up there?

[Loose rivets]

You seem to be saying you've tried it in both your computers, and at one stage it worked in one of them.

Is there a chance it was damaged while in the working one? Could it have been written to? I don't really know, can CDs be "formatted to be used on other computers" the same as DVDs and if so, is there a chance it can beat protections?

Is there a minute scratch at the beginning, and have you tried cleaning it with one of the magic products - including huffing on it?

Have you got some pals that will let you try it in theirs? Just broadening the read width range on the laser perhaps.






Yes, I edited. So what?

[Saab Dastard]

If it is a CD-R, it cannot be written to again, so mechanical damage is the likely culprit. If it was a CD-RW then, in addition to damage, it is possible that it was re-formatted at some point.

If it is several years old, it is possible that the dye layer is failing - much more likely with CD-RW than CD-R - although if it has been left exposed to sunlight for any significant length of time, all bets are off.

SD

[Milo Minderbinder]

It would help if you told us what version of windows was involved, what software was used to write the disk, what CD/DVD burning software is on the machine, and whether the machine has packet writing / reading software (CDRW) software installed
I'd guess that the disk has been written with packet writing software and your PC can't read it as it does not have packet software installed

Alternatively see if this program will crack open the disk
Its a trial - you may have to buy the entire program to extract the data, but the trial will tell you if anything is recoverable
Data recovery software for CD / DVD / BD / HD / Flash / USB drive / MMC, SD, Compact

[denachtenmai]

Thanks Milo, I downloaded and tried isobuster but from that it looks as if the disc is not mounting, it makes all the noises but then shuts down and is not seen.
The worst thing is I had them yesterday but as said I didn't import them, leaving it to later
I made 2 CD-R of photo's about 4 years ago, been kept in boxes, and have looked at them occasionally just to check, they were made using windows xp, the second one loads and imported to her laptop perfectly, but the other just will not and, according to the properties, it is full (all blue) but, used, free and capacity all read "0 bytes"
Looks like I might have to go to the professionals
Regards, Den.

[aviate1138]

Just a wild stab in the dark but have you tried opening it on a fairly recent Mac? With OSX 7... Use Disk Utility in Applications/Utilities and see if it shows up. There is a First Aid box which might help.
My iMac runs MS-DOS items all the time

[denachtenmai]

Many thanks to all for your interest and advice, I have had a result, the "old" computer (a 3 Ghz pentium4 desktop running XP) has been in the garage since it refused to run for more than 20 mins. so my wife suggested trying it again.
It has now been running for at least 4 hours and I managed to extract all of the photo's to a new disc, result, and at least she is happy
Regards, Den.
(And the spastic disc is now a coaster in my shed!)

[Milo Minderbinder]

All to d with incompatible writing formats
The built in CD burning in XP was awful

You'll probably find th disk was OK - it just needed finalising