Problems with reading from a photo CD

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piano11

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Hello. I have just found this forum and I wonder if anybody can help me.

Earlier this week, I transferred some family photos from my c-disk to a blank CD-R. I copied them successfully and afterwards, I ejected the CD and put it back into the CD drive to check that they had copied okay before I erased the originals. No problems.

Last night, I put the same CD back into the drive, but Explorer would not read the files contained thereon. Strangely, Control Panel/Computer/DVD Drive detected the disc had a lot of used space where I made the copies, and when I tried to copy a 'test file' to the drive, it asks me to prepare the disc, as it would before a format (which it couldn't do anyway as I'm using a CD-R not a CD-RW!)

Could anyone tell me what to do here? The disc has been cleaned incidentally!

Thank You
 
did you finalize the disc? finalizing is a process that closes the disc burn session and allows the disc to be read by other machines/drives. typically, this is used for CDRWs. finalizing will not allow a XXX-RW disc to be re-written. CDRs canont be re-written, and therefore the finalization process is only to allow the session to be properly closed.

it will depend on the software used as to how to finalize the session.

it may be possible that you have a function of your drive failing or failed. i have seen DVD drives read CDs but not DVDs after some sort of freak out. You can check that by using a disc of that sort.

unfortunately, it may have just been a crap disc. it happens.
 
Yes, I did. When I press the eject button on the disc, it does this automatically whilst it shows the message'please wait while the disc is made available for use on other computers' or words similar.
 
well, if this disc is supposed to have just pictures on it....you could try your DVD player or the like to try and read it. Some cheaper DVD players might not read burnt discs, so this is not a definite. If it does not work, try something else. Ideally, you would want another computer to try and read it.

Long story short, if the drive that created the disc cannot read it (and can read other written discs or even blank ones), chances are you have a shiny new coaster. I would try the burn again.
 
piano11 said:
I copied them successfully and afterwards, I ejected the CD and put it back into the CD drive to check that they had copied okay before I erased the originals. No problems.
Click to expand...

Silverhazesurfer said:
...I would try the burn again
Click to expand...

As has been said, your only recourse is trying to read the disc in other machines.

If the disk is faulty then that's that, I'm afraid :(
 
The same thing once happened to me. I copied pics to CD and then checked that they were on the CD before deleting them from the PC. Next time I inserted the CD the PC could not read it.

I chucked out the CD and downloaded Recuva (free recovery programme) and fortunately managed to retrieve 95% of the deleted pics which are now sitting on a different CD. I was informed, by someone who probably knows, that it must have been a duff CD but why it seemed to be OK for a short while and later was kaput remains a mystery.
 
depending on how cheaply manufactured the cds are will directly affect how long they will work. the CDRs with only the foil on them tend to have the shortest lifespan. it is always the "get what you pay for" scenario. however, a cd can be even torched by the sun.
 
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The CD I used was from a spool of 25 of Morrisons (supermarket chain in Britain) own label. Its the cheapo cheapo CDs from 'pound shops' that I tend to eschew. Ive always used either Morrisons or Tesco blank CDs and DVDs and never had any problems until now.

I will try putting the CD in a different machine (sadly all my neighbours are not yet online, so will have to 'ask the family'), but will also try googling Recuva, or maybe even a System Restore - will let youse know how I get on.
 
Not much luck with Recuva, it found lots of obscure but unrecoverable pictures, and not a single picture that was acidentally deleted. And nothing with Restore either. Time for plan B.
 
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