I just bought a new computer for my home, replacing my Pentium II Windows 98 with a Pentium 4 Windows XP.
There were files on the Windows 98 that I needed to move to the new box, so I used a CD-RW data CD I had previously created and used successfully, and copied the files from my hard drive to the CD. I then foolishly deleted the files from the hard drive, and emptied the recycle bin.
During the course of installing the new XP box, I found I needed to download a driver. I went to another PC (my son’s), which also runs XP, got onto the web, found the driver and did the download. And since I needed some way of getting the driver from one box to another, I downloaded directly to the same data CD I was using to move my files.
The download seemed to go OK, but when it was complete I got an error message saying that Windows didn’t recognize the format of the CD (or something like that). I cancelled out of the error message.
And now I can’t read any files off the CD. Windows Explorer (on both XP boxes) sees the CD in the drive, but doesn’t list any files on it. “Properties” says it’s 100% full.
I doubt that I’ve actually deleted any data off the CD, but somehow Windows is confused about the status of the CD.
Help!! I desperately need the data on the CD. Is there any way to recover?
I assume you are doing several sessions. You may have to close it before you can read it. Also, check the “volume”. I believe it is under “properties” in the device manager in WIN 98 but I am not sure about XP. Different sessions show up as different volumes in the CDROM.
What burning software are you using? in Nero you have: file - info - burn - finalize CD. Look also for “multisession”. It is sort like having different partitions on the CDrom. You need to close it for all of it to become apparent and even then maybe you need to select only one of the sessions at a time.
I formatted the CD with HP CD Writer (came with the CD burner). Then just used Windows Explorer to drag & drop files onto the drive.
I’ve just gotten a report from home that the XP I used to download the driver onto the CD has a dialog box on it…that says that the File Wizard cannot complete copying the files because the disk has been ejected. !! When I get home I might just pop the disk back in and click “retry” on this dialog box…problem might be readily resolved.
Yep, you need to close it before you can read it in another computer. If you want to be safe next time and be sure it can be read in another computer you should close it (I vaguely recall it is called Disk at once). You need to read the manual and understand the different options (packet writing, sessions, closing, etc). If you want to learn only one then learn to write the disk in one go and close it.
Basically what you are doing now is putting files on the CDROM but not writing the index which is still on the hard disk of the computer you are using to write it. Once you close it the directory will be written to the CDrom.
Problem solved. I booted up the old Windows 98 with CD burner attached; and when I put the problem CD in the burner drive, it had no problem recognizing it. And once I did that, neither did the XP system.
I think the problem all started with the download to the CD on the XP box. I wasn’t aware that when you copy a file to a CD on XP, it’s really just queuing it up for copy, not actually copying–this is a second step, that I skipped. I realize now that I ejected the CD before the actual copy took place, and this left the CD in a bad state.
>>You need to read the manual and understand the different options (packet writing, sessions, closing, etc).
I have a new Dell with a CD-RW drive and some Roxio promotional or entry level driver for it - and what little manual I have says almost nothing about these things. Eventually learned that CD-R can be written to on more than one occasion (maybe that’s what “multiple sessions” are), and CD-RW can in addition be reformatted (or was it just “erased”?). But I’d sure like to read a clear explanation of all this so I understand how to think about it. I like technical details.
And why isn’t this all just part of the disk operating system? Why is Microsoft trying to take over all these other things, like cars and the internet, if their latest disk operating system doesn’t operate the disks?
CD-R’s can only be written to once, so they’re popular for uses like audio CD’s, where you burn it once and then read from it repeatedly. CD-RW’s can be formatted and used for repeated writings, like a floppy disk. This isn’t a function of your hardware or the operating system, but of the disk itself.
But this isn’t true! I wrote to a CD-R, and ejected it from the drive and put it in another computer (1999 a pre-CD-R computer), and read the file I’d written. Then I put it back into computer 1 and wrote a second file onto it, and then put it back into computer 2 and could read both files.
Maybe you can’t erase, maybe you can’t rewrite, but you can definitely write to a CD-R more than once.