Unreadable JPG Files on CD

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

"tallen" wrote in message
...
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


Have you tried Copying the files to your hard drive first?

Just guessing, here. You didn't what type of disc the pictures were burned
onto. Maybe you're trying to read a -R disc on a +R reader, or vice versa.
Have you always been able to view the images on your computer or only on
whatever other computer from which they were burned to disc?

"tallen" wrote in message
...
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

Mick Harris wrote:

Have you tried Copying the files to your hard drive first?

Thanks for the quick response. Yes, I have copied over a few samples,
both those that I can view on the CD and those with the strange Icon.
In each case, the same condition appears on the computer...ie, the
viewable ones can be viewed and the non-viewable ones can not be viewed.

I have also tried Mr. Photo, Roxio Photorelay, MS Word, and MS Photo
Editor with the exact same results.

More information...

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.

Thanks for the quick response.

T

Howard Joe wrote:

Just guessing, here. You didn't what type of disc the pictures were burned
onto. Maybe you're trying to read a -R disc on a +R reader, or vice versa.
Have you always been able to view the images on your computer or only on
whatever other computer from which they were burned to disc?


Howard,

I burned the files from my HD onto an Imation -R CD. All my CDs are
-Rs of various brands. I am, at this time, using the same CD burner
and computer that I did the burning on 3 Feb 03. I do not (or I should
say, have not) had any issues reading/writing to a CD on this burrner
to-date. I did try 4 other CD player/burners on my two other computers
with the same results.

Thanks

T

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.
__________________________________________________ _____

tallen wrote:

...Only about half the images now preview in thumbnails the rest just
show a generic page icon of a sailboat and sunset. .
Any advice before I just shoot myself and go back to film and paper.

Thanks in advance.

T

More information that might help someone smarter than I. I tried "JPEG
Recover" and it failed to recover the corrupted files. It said "Image
headers corrupted (error 1004). Can not recover."

T

Whatever else you do, I would suggest hanging onto the CD. I had a
collection of DVDs go bad, initially thinking it was a bad batch or brand of
discs. Eventually, I learned it was my CD/DVD writer going bad. Sometimes,
after inserting, ejecting, and reinserting a disc, I would get a directory
listing of the files. I then would copy off to hard drive a few at a time,
until I got an error message for a particular file. Usually, then I would
need to reboot the computer and resume the copying with the next set of
files. Tedious process, but I recovered most of my files from the collection
of discs.

"tallen" wrote in message
...
tallen wrote:

...Only about half the images now preview in thumbnails the rest just
show a generic page icon of a sailboat and sunset. .
Any advice before I just shoot myself and go back to film and paper.

Thanks in advance.

T

More information that might help someone smarter than I. I tried "JPEG
Recover" and it failed to recover the corrupted files. It said "Image
headers corrupted (error 1004). Can not recover."
T

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.

Folks, you've heard this before, but I'll say it again:

KEEP BACKUPS OF IMPORTANT FILES!

You didn't.

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.

It's a media issue. The CD is going bad in patches across its
surface. You've done the right things so far so I don't know what
else to suggest.

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

Keep backups of important files. You entrusted your photos to a
20-cent CD. Next time make it at least two 20-cent CDs.

I keep three copies of all my photos. One on the hard disk, one
copied to DVDs at home, and a second set of DVDs in my office at work.
I worry if that's enough. And my photos require about a dozen DVDs
for a full backup.

--
Ray Fischer

2 things to try that can work miracles....
Clean the disk and polish it radially with furniture spray, although there
is better purpose made stuff.
Isobuster. I rescued about 95% of a similar CD of jpgs recently.


"tallen" wrote in message
...
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