I am in need of advice or help on a problem I am having opening up images after burning them to a DVD. I have used the "Data" option several times in the past to back-up my images to DVD. I have burned the images to a DVD and closed the session, but when I try to open the image I get an error message. I am not able to see any thumbnail image. Windows Fax/Viewer says "No preview available". Photoshop CS3 says "Cannot open image because of a program error."

Again, I am able to see the image on the DVD as a jpeg file, but am not able to see a preview of the image or open it. When I look at the file size it says it is over 3MB which seems to match what the other file sizes I am able to open are.

Does anybody have a clue to what is wrong? Does anybody have a clue on how I can recover these images?

I appreciate your help.

Many Thanks
Ray

Ray,

Does this happen to ALL the images you wrote to DVD, or just some of them?

If it's only some of them, your problem can have two different causes and we need to find which cause. Can you copy the affected .JPG files off the DVD without a copying error? If not, you have a disc error in the area that file occupies.
If you can copy them off, can you open the copies on the hard drive with your usual viewers? If not, you have file corruption and the file has been broken somewhere between the time it was produced and the time it was written to DVD.

If you suspect that files are being broken during a copy to DVD, turning on verification when writing will either reassure you or confirm that something's going wrong.

Regards,
Brendon

Brendon,
Thank you for your reply. There were 4 folders burned to the DVD. Only one of the folders are viewable. I am able to copy the files to my hard drive, but am still unable to open them. I was afraid it was an issue of the file somehow becoming corrupted. I am not sure how, but it had to be during the burning phase. When I download the images from my camera to the computer, I think an .inf file is created. In the folder on the DVD where I am able to view the images there is data written in this file. In the folders where I cannot view the images, the file is blank. I am thinking that somehow when burning the images it did not burn the .inf files for the other three folders as they are all labeled the same.

Do you know if there is a way to recover these files. I burned the DVD over a month ago and then deleted them off my harddrive. Is it possible to still be able to recover these files?

Hello again Ray,

I'm sorry, but your recovery chances don't look very good..

If you can copy the files off the DVD then we have to assume that corrupted files got burned. Anything we do with that DVD is just going to produce extra copies of the bad files.

Since it was a month ago that the files were deleted from the hard drive it's very unlikely that you could recover anything meaningful from the HD as the space will have been reused, perhaps several times over.

You may be able to get something from your camera if you haven't used it, or haven't done much with it since then. I believe the usual strategy with memory cards and sticks is to write from beginning to end and then start at the beginning again, so that all areas of the chip get equal use. If you haven't used it much there's a good chance that area won't have been reused yet. A Google search on "recover deleted pictures" showed several programs which claim to be able to recover deleted stuff from a camera.

I haven't any experience with camera software which creates .INF files. All the .inf files I've seen are installation instructions for software.

Lastly, I don't know how/when your images were munted. I have not seen this problem before but perhaps another reader might be able to suggest the cause and how to stop it. I would urge you to do something like I do with precious files - I copy (not move) them to the hard drive, and check that they're openable and viewable there. Then I burn them to disc, and check that they're openable and viewable there. I only delete them from the camera once I'm sure I have them safe on a standard non-RW disc.

Good fortune,
Brendon