Solve : Lost photo's on a CD?

1.	Solve : Lost photo's on a CD?
Answer» I have what I consider an almost impossible problem. I back up all my PHOTO's on a CD. I have one CD that has 24 groups of pictures on it. I have viewed these pictures several times for the last three years. What is strange is that 8 groups (possibly 75 pictures or more) all of a sudden are missing off my CD. Why did I lose 30% of my recorded pictures? Once the flats and pits are burned into a CD they are there to stay, yet my computer can not tread them. At first I thought there may be a problem with my desk top computer, so I tried to view them on my lap top, same thing happens, lost pictures. I have added pictures to that CD and they are fine. I used a Memorex CD-R (not CD-RW) with 152 mb free space. I use the Kodak Easyshare software and XP O. S. I recently reformatted my hard drive so I have therefore lost those photo's. This problem occured before the reformatt. Any ideas?Are the pics you lost created before you added the new ones? It APPEARS that the "CD Multisession" may have failed. http://www.mscience.com/faq67.html See the last paragraph: "Multisession recording is usually reserved for special applications such as Kodak Photo CD. Archival storage is best accomplished using single session recording, or packet recording if files are frequently appended, updated, or otherwise changed. Important files that had been saved to a multisession disc may not be ACCESSIBLE at a critical time if the disc has not been finalized, or may not be readable in drives that are not multisession capable."Quote from: Eddie B on March 05, 2011, 03:07:32 PM Once the flats and pits are burned into a CD they are there to stay They are definitely not there "to stay". CD-Rs can (and often do) deteriorate. Exposure to radiation, inks, other chemicals, water, or pollutants can adversely affect CD-R quality. Although environmental degradation should be avoided, a major cause of deterioration is improper user handling based upon overconfidence in the robust construction and error correction of CD-R media. Handling or storage conditions may degrade good discs, especially if the thin, vulnerable protective coating on the label surface is flawed or damaged. In addition, high quality media that is recorded in poor writers may fail interchange standards. CD-R discs normally contain four layers consisting of a pre-grooved substrate, a dye layer, a metal layer, and a protective coating. All but the metal layer contain organic compounds that can degrade as a result of changes in their chemical structures or because of unstable defects that grow in size. Mechanical stress induced by rapid environmental changes may result in excessive differential expansion of the various layers and delamination or excessive birefringence. These and other ageing modes limit media longevity. CD--R ageing processes can be accelerated by high temperature and humidity environments. A Dutch magazine found that some big-name brand disks were unreadable 20 months after burning. Possibly you could try a data recovery company, or software such as BadCopy Pro. It doesn't make sense that only certain folders were affected....i'm leaning towards the multi-session theory... If thats the case DLoad and try the Free trial of ISOBuster...it will retrieve them.Thanks Computer Commando, Salmon Trout and Patio for responding and your suggestions. I appreciate your input. I have tried Bad Copy Pro and ISO Busters and neither program could find the missing photo's. What concerns me is that those missing photo's were on the disk for a couple of years and I was able to view them just fine. There are other photo's that have been on the disc for a longer period of time and they still are there. Yes, some of the groups of missing pictures were burned before I added new ones and some of the missing were burned after I added new pictures. There is no set pattern. All groups of missing pictures and pictures still on the CD were burned individually at different times. When the groups of pictures (about 75 or more ) were found missing it seemed to happen all at once. The CD has been well taken care of. No scratches, fingerprints, fluids, ETC.. I guess there is no way of correcting a multisession error after it has occured. I finalize my DVD's after recording video but I am not familiar with finalizing a CD and if it can even be done in the Kodak program. What now?Sorry, their gone. This makes a good case for multiple backups on different types of media.Have you considered the possibility that the files holding the pictures are still there, but the file holding the index for finding them has been CORRUPTED enough that it no longer has usable pointers for finding some of the folders? A data recovery company MIGHT help in that case.What exactly did ISOBustrer find and what options did you select ? ?

Answer»

I have what I consider an almost impossible problem. I back up all my PHOTO's on a CD. I have one CD that has 24 groups of pictures on it. I have viewed these pictures several times for the last three years. What is strange is that 8 groups (possibly 75 pictures or more) all of a sudden are missing off my CD. Why did I lose 30% of my recorded pictures? Once the flats and pits are burned into a CD they are there to stay, yet my computer can not tread them. At first I thought there may be a problem with my desk top computer, so I tried to view them on my lap top, same thing happens, lost pictures. I have added pictures to that CD and they are fine. I used a Memorex CD-R (not CD-RW) with 152 mb free space. I use the Kodak Easyshare software and XP O. S. I recently reformatted my hard drive so I have therefore lost those photo's. This problem occured before the reformatt. Any ideas?Are the pics you lost created before you added the new ones? It APPEARS that the "CD Multisession" may have failed.
http://www.mscience.com/faq67.html
See the last paragraph: "Multisession recording is usually reserved for special applications such as Kodak Photo CD. Archival storage is best accomplished using single session recording, or packet recording if files are frequently appended, updated, or otherwise changed. Important files that had been saved to a multisession disc may not be ACCESSIBLE at a critical time if the disc has not been finalized, or may not be readable in drives that are not multisession capable."Quote from: Eddie B on March 05, 2011, 03:07:32 PM

Once the flats and pits are burned into a CD they are there to stay

They are definitely not there "to stay". CD-Rs can (and often do) deteriorate. Exposure to radiation, inks, other chemicals, water, or pollutants can adversely affect CD-R quality. Although environmental degradation should be avoided, a major cause of deterioration is improper user handling based upon overconfidence in the robust construction and error correction of CD-R media. Handling or storage conditions may degrade good discs, especially if the thin, vulnerable protective coating on the label surface is flawed or damaged. In addition, high quality media that is recorded in poor writers may fail interchange standards.

CD-R discs normally contain four layers consisting of a pre-grooved substrate, a dye layer, a metal layer, and a protective coating. All but the metal layer contain organic compounds that can degrade as a result of changes in their chemical structures or because of unstable defects that grow in size. Mechanical stress induced by rapid environmental changes may result in excessive differential expansion of the various layers and delamination or excessive birefringence. These and other ageing modes limit media longevity. CD--R ageing processes can be accelerated by high temperature and humidity environments.

A Dutch magazine found that some big-name brand disks were unreadable 20 months after burning. Possibly you could try a data recovery company, or software such as BadCopy Pro.

It doesn't make sense that only certain folders were affected....i'm leaning towards the multi-session theory...
If thats the case DLoad and try the Free trial of ISOBuster...it will retrieve them.Thanks Computer Commando, Salmon Trout and Patio for responding and your suggestions. I appreciate your input. I have tried Bad Copy Pro and ISO Busters and neither program could find the missing photo's. What concerns me is that those missing photo's were on the disk for a couple of years and I was able to view them just fine. There are other photo's that have been on the disc for a longer period of time and they still are there. Yes, some of the groups of missing pictures were burned before I added new ones and some of the missing were burned after I added new pictures. There is no set pattern. All groups of missing pictures and pictures still on the CD were burned individually at different times. When the groups of pictures (about 75 or more ) were found missing it seemed to happen all at once. The CD has been well taken care of. No scratches, fingerprints, fluids, ETC.. I guess there is no way of correcting a multisession error after it has occured. I finalize my DVD's after recording video but I am not familiar with finalizing a CD and if it can even be done in the Kodak program. What now?Sorry, their gone. This makes a good case for multiple backups on different types of media.Have you considered the possibility that the files holding the pictures are still there, but the file holding the index for finding them has been CORRUPTED enough that it no longer has usable pointers for finding some of the folders? A data recovery company MIGHT help in that case.What exactly did ISOBustrer find and what options did you select ? ?

Solve : Lost photo's on a CD?

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