Unreadable JPG Files on CD

All of the files were viewable on the hard drive prior to me copying over
to the CD. I specifically checked them as I wanted to archive only the
important ones and purge those not important when I cleaned up my HD.

Did you then verify that the CD copy was OK?

Some have posted here that your CD copy is going bad ... perhaps it was bad
from the get-go.

"Charles Schuler" wrote:

All of the files were viewable on the hard drive prior to me copying
over to the CD. I specifically checked them as I wanted to archive
only the important ones and purge those not important when I cleaned
up my HD.

Did you then verify that the CD copy was OK?

Some have posted here that your CD copy is going bad ... perhaps it
was bad from the get-go.

That's a good point, I've had a number of DVD-Rs which seemed burned
with no reported errors but then went on to fail the verify stage at
around the 3GB mark. Moral: always select the "verify after write"
option, even though it does nearly double the total time to burn a disk.
A quick manual check isn't enough, the folders will probably have
written ok, and many of the files too, but maybe somewhere further into the
disk some of the files contain garbage.


--
__________________________________________________ _____

Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you
will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
__________________________________________________ _____

tallen writes:
All of the files were viewable on the hard drive prior to me copying
over to the CD. I specifically checked them as I wanted to archive
only the important ones and purge those not important when I cleaned
up my HD.

There's some chance you can salvage parts of the images even if the
file headers are messed up, so archive what you can and hold on to the
original discs.

You might also try reading the discs in several different types of
reader including older, slower ones.

Write Verify does not always work.

"if" wrote in message
...
"Charles Schuler" wrote:

All of the files were viewable on the hard drive prior to me copying
over to the CD. I specifically checked them as I wanted to archive
only the important ones and purge those not important when I cleaned
up my HD.

Did you then verify that the CD copy was OK?

Some have posted here that your CD copy is going bad ... perhaps it
was bad from the get-go.

That's a good point, I've had a number of DVD-Rs which seemed burned
with no reported errors but then went on to fail the verify stage at
around the 3GB mark. Moral: always select the "verify after write"
option, even though it does nearly double the total time to burn a disk.
A quick manual check isn't enough, the folders will probably have
written ok, and many of the files too, but maybe somewhere further into
the
disk some of the files contain garbage.


--
__________________________________________________ _____

Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you
will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
__________________________________________________ _____

tallen wrote:

HELP!

Hi guys, thanks for the information and hints. Here's some follow-up.

1. I copied the files almost 3 years ago. Since that time my CRS has
gotten worse and I do not remember if I verified the copy or not. I
think I did but like I said...I CRS. :-)

2. Tonight I re-opened the CD which has been sitting in the CD player
all day. The sucker opened more of the files. Very interesting as the
CD is warm. This could be a CD player issue. Time to get a new one.

3. Out of desperation, I hunted down a bunch of old CDs from my archives
and found a partial copy of the files. I was able to copy/resurrect
about 75% of everything. Only a 5 or 6 of the folders are now not
accessible. I'll leave it in the player tonight and try again tomorrow.

Nevertheless, it's time to square away my archiving routine. I've been
sloppy about this and there is way too much valuable stuff on my
computer that can get lost. So tomorrow, it's copy, copy, copy...back
up, back up, back up.

Thanks again. I'll let you know if I find anything else out about the CD.

T

On Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:39:41 GMT, tallen
wrote:

HELP!

I have a CD with a large quantity of family photos all .jpgs taken
between 1999 and 2003. The CD was supposed to be my archive before I
wiped the pictures off my hard drive. Only about half the images now
preview in thumbnails the rest just show a generic page icon of a
sailboat and sunset. When I try to open one of these files with
Microsoft picture viewer it says "no preview available". When I try to
open using Photoshop it says bad format. Same with Photo Deluxe except
it says there is a problem parsing the JPEG data. Yet, the CD directory
lists them with the correct file name and appropriate size as does the
Properties box.

This isn't good.

I've tried the CD on 5 different drives in 3 different computers with
the same outcome. Except...sometimes one or two of the files that had a
generic icon will show up correctly in thumbnails when I reinsert the CD
in some of the drives...but it is sporatic. Which is very strange.
Incidentally, the unreadable files are not in sequential order. They
are spread out across the whole CD. So I don't think it is a media
issue...I'm only guessing at this.

Any advice before I just shoot myself and go back to film and paper.

Thanks in advance.

T


Try the trail version of badcopy pro to see if that can do it, i used
on a cd for my brother's jpegs of his round the world trip and it
worked well recovering about 95% of the pictures.

http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/


Steve

Try the trail version of badcopy pro to see if that can do it, i used
on a cd for my brother's jpegs of his round the world trip and it
worked well recovering about 95% of the pictures.

http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/


Steve

Tried BadCopy and it showed every sector out of 490,000 was faulty on a
CF card.

BUT I then tried this site and downloaded their program - Zero
Assumption

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/

and it is really good. I had tried all sorts of programs to extract
150 photos that I'd lost and none worked but this one and it got me
something like 120 back. And it's free !!

Rob

I can second the suggestion for trying Isobuster. It's saved a lot of data
for me. After having several CD's go bad over time and losing a lot of
photos, I now back up onto an external hard drive AND CD's. Even external
hard drives can go bad. I'm just now sending a Maxtor external hard drive
back to the company for a replacement as it went bad within six months.
Luckily, I was able to transfer data to another external drive before the
Maxtor stopped working altogether.

Barry

"if" wrote in message
...
tallen wrote:
I have a CD with a large quantity of family photos all .jpgs taken
between 1999 and 2003. The CD was supposed to be my archive before I
wiped the pictures off my hard drive. Only about half the images now
preview in thumbnails the rest just show a generic page icon of a
sailboat and sunset. When I try to open one of these files with
Microsoft picture viewer it says "no preview available".

Probably the CD has gone bad. This happens quite a lot, especially if you
have attached a sticky label to the CD, as this can cause the layers to
delaminate over time. I would suggest getting a copy of the program
"Isobuster", it can read damaged CD's and DVD's which Windows would give
up
on, I have found it useful for salvaging data from damaged disks. It
probably won't get everything, but it will get more than a straight file
copy using windows would manage. Windows tends to give up on hitting a
damaged file, copying none of it, whereas Isobuster will copy as much of
the file as it can, and will make several attempts to get the data.

When archiving stuff to CD you should keep a backup on another CD of a
different brand (or on you hard disk!) in case you got a bad batch. I
would
never rely on an unbackedup CD for important stuff - I even backed up my
old Kodak Photo-CDs to my hard drive (also makes the photos more
accessible!).

The main reasons CD-R's go bad are
(a) "CD-rot" - imperfectly sealed edges let oxygen in and it corrodes away
the aluminium foil layer (you can see this as feathery marks near the
edge). This is a manufacturing defect but may only evidence itself months
or years down the line. Backing up to a different brand safeguards against
getting a duff batch.
(b) delamination - the thin layers of dye, aluminium, and lacquer can be
pulled free of the plastic disk by putting a sticky label on it. Again
this
takes time, the subtle stretching of the label as it's stuck down causes a
gentle tension on the layers which delaminate them over a period of about
two years, destroying some or all of the data. Never use labels, either
use
a printable CD or just write on the disk with a soft-tipped marker pen.

DVD-R's are a little different, the data part is sandwiched between two
plastic disks so the protection against labels and physical damage is much
better. However badly sealed edges might still be a problem, in my
experience it is alarmingly easy to pull the two plastic disks apart,
which
makes me wonder how well the layers are sealed against oxygen getting in
and corroding the metal foil. Also DVDs have much less error correction
data built in to the recordings, whereas CD's have a huge amount of
redundancy which makes it possible for data in damaged sections to be
reconstructed up to a point.



--
__________________________________________________ _____

I didn't get where I am today.
__________________________________________________ _____

Barry wrote:
I can second the suggestion for trying Isobuster. It's saved a lot of data
for me. After having several CD's go bad over time and losing a lot of
photos, I now back up onto an external hard drive AND CD's. Even external
hard drives can go bad. I'm just now sending a Maxtor external hard drive
back to the company for a replacement as it went bad within six months.
Luckily, I was able to transfer data to another external drive before the
Maxtor stopped working altogether.

Sometimes if the components on the drive are failing, you can put the
drive in the freezer and use it for five or ten minutes before it fails
again. I've saved some data like this.