I'm doing the year book magazine for school, I burned the whole first half of articles and images for the publishers with XP's standard "write-files-to-disc" method, I handed it in to the publishers and they gave it back as it didn't work on their computers, I tried it again at school, home and several friends to see if their drive was the problem, to give you the big picture - I insert the CD-RW into the drive, no dialog or prompt box comes up, I go into "My Computer" and click but no response so I right-click explore and the disc is empty, when I right-click properties it says the disc is RAW and the disc diagram is all solid blue, I have been researching all day as it's vital I get it back as I deleted the back up to make room for the other set of files (2nd part of the year book), the master school recycle bin is empty so it is really gone. I have downloaded and several programs after reading CD-DVD recovery articles, I attempted to recover my CD with CDRoller and various other programs,I tried the trial version of ISOBuster and managed to get a .iso but when I attempted the recovery options it said I needed to get the PRO version and I don't have the money to buy the program, is there any possibility the disc isn't finalized and I can finalize it on my computer and then give it to the publishers working and readable, the .ISO is 800mb (I don't know why it's so big my files were only about 100-150mb) I would happily upload to RS.com or a file sharing sight for someone to try recover the files with their PRO version of ISObuster or another method?? So many people are depending on me and the disc contains around 80 hours of my own time as I have been performing work for the magazine all year, please help me out, I can upload the .iso image asap if anyone is willing to download it and attempt something, thankyou in advance!! :)
I am not familiar with Microsoft's standard write files to disc method; but if it is used to add files to a CD-RW disc, then it does some form of formatting to allow files to be added without writing a final table of contents (which is what "finalizing" is). CD-RW media were designed to be erasable discs written and finalized like CD-Rs. When people wanted them to be more like floppy disks and appendable, things got sloppy because there were dozens of competing, incompatible formatting programs. The result is that when unfinalized CD-RW media are placed on computer drives other than the original one that did the recording, those other systems may attempt to write a format to the disc that corrupts the original format, leaving the disc illegibile.
I suspect that is what happened to your disc. The more recording drives you put it into, the more corrupted the format file system. (It won't happen to a disc if it is put into a CD-ROM drive.) For the future, do one of two things:
1) if the medium carrying your files is going to any drive other than the that recorded it, record on a CD-R, not a CD-RW.
2) if you must use a CD-RW, write and finalize it on one drive just as if it were a CD-R. Do not format it with packet-writing software.
For now, the files may still be recoverable; but you would have to use recovery software that ignores any table of contents and builds its own temporary table based on what it sees on the disc. ISOBuster Pro is probably a good one; I've used several others to recover data from CD-RW discs. The 800MB .ISO file you see is the total data storage on the disc. Downloading it will not help because no drive can read the data on the disc unless there is a table of contents, real or temporarily constructed.
Do not do anything else to the disc! Do not put it into any other CD-RW or DVD+/-RW drive; it should only go into a CD-ROM drive. Do not finalize it. You might try to find a trial version of some recovery software that will allow you one attempt. If you cannot find anything like that, you will have to determine the cost of losing all your work versus the cost of ISOBuster Pro.
A blank CD-R is not "empty"; the pregroove has a wobble (the ATIP), .... Once a
section of a CD-R is written, it cannot be erased or rewritten, unlike a CD-RW.
... Track At Once - data are written to the CD-R one track at a time but the ...
materials to come in contact with the metal and/or the dye. ...
Originally posted by robel11: A blank CD-R is not "empty"; the pregroove has a wobble (the ATIP), .... Once a
section of a CD-R is written, it cannot be erased or rewritten, unlike a CD-RW.
... Track At Once - data are written to the CD-R one track at a time but the ...
materials to come in contact with the metal and/or the dye. ...
