Unreadable CD-R ... or is it?

[Chris]

A photographer has sent me some pictures on a CD-R which my iMac says is blank, or sometimes says 'this disc is not readable by this computer'. But our Philips DVD recorder in the lounge recognises it as a data disc and plays the pictures back as a slideshow.

I really need to get the pictures off the disc and onto the computer ... I've emailed the photographer to see if he can email them or use FTP but in the meantime, is there anything I can try on the Mac?

It's an iMac, fully up to date with Snow Leopard (10.6.8).

[MikeyB]

Try another computer.

Recently had a DVD-R that I made on my laptop (Windows not Mac) the decided one day it couldn't read saying it was blank.

I took it over to my Mums and her PC read it fine, so I copied the files off (not a direct disc copy) & burned to a new disc, was then fine in the laptop.

Guess some drives are less tolerant than others.

[Chris]

Easier said than done, working from home and 3 miles from the nearest village ...

I will of course try an alternative machine when I'm next within arm's reach of one, just wondering whether there's anything I can attempt right now to fix the problem with the resources I have to hand.

[DaiNasty]

Do you have an external (USB) CD drive?

[Chris]

Nope, just the iMac internal one.

I'm finding lots of forum posts around the interwebs that moan about various CD-making programmes on Windows machines that do not properly finalize the disc by default, or are generally not very ISO compliant ...

I am starting to suspect that my photographer may simply be a bit sloppy with his procedures but may not have come up against compatibility issues until now, most people still using Windoze rather than MacOS.

[Taf]

Maybe the disk hasn't been "closed" (finalised)?

[heero_yuy]

Sometimes warming or cooling the disk, within reason, can get it to read. Thermal expansion tweaks the tolerances I guess.

[Chris]

Well, I have successfully created an FTP account for him through the cPanel on my webhosting package and have acquired the pictures that way.

Would still like to get to the bottom of the non-functioning CD-R though. He tells me he authored it with Ashampoo Burning Studio 10:

http://www.ashampoo.com/uk/gbp/pin/2...ning-Studio-10

Anyone know anything about this package?

[zoro]

Originally Posted by Taf

Maybe the disk hasn't been "closed" (finalised)?

Most of the time that was the problem for me as well. Try double checking is the burning process over before ejecting the disk from the drive after burning it.

[DaiNasty]

Only that I tried a version of Burning Studio a year or so back and found it a bit buggy and prone to crashes. Dumped it fairly quickly as I recall and went back to CDBurnerXP.

[qasdfdsaq]

Not finalizing a disk isn't sloppy or a fault, it's a feature and intentional. Being unable to read a finalized disk is a fault.

[LSainsbury]

Originally Posted by Chris

Easier said than done, working from home and 3 miles from the nearest village ...

I will of course try an alternative machine when I'm next within arm's reach of one, just wondering whether there's anything I can attempt right now to fix the problem with the resources I have to hand.

I know you've now semi-fixed the issue, but could you haved dumped the images to a USB memory stick??

[Hom3r]

There is SW that looks at the contents/data of a disk and ignores the file system and tells you what is on it, I have used it to recover data from a corupt CD.

But I cannot think what it is called.

---------- Post added at 19:11 ---------- Previous post was at 19:08 ----------

I think it called Isobuster

http://www.isobuster.com/

---------- Post added at 19:12 ---------- Previous post was at 19:11 ----------

The disk may not have been finalised.

[Chris]

Originally Posted by LSainsbury

I know you've now semi-fixed the issue, but could you haved dumped the images to a USB memory stick??

If I could get into the CD-R, then yes ... but not being able to get into the CD-R is the nub of the issue.

I will have access to a WinXP laptop on Sunday morning. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I'm determined to get to the bottom of this, so will take the CD along and see what happens.

---------- Post added at 20:12 ---------- Previous post was at 20:12 ----------

Originally Posted by Hom3r

There is SW that looks at the contents/data of a disk and ignores the file system and tells you what is on it, I have used it to recover data from a corupt CD.

But I cannot think what it is called.

---------- Post added at 19:11 ---------- Previous post was at 19:08 ----------

I think it called Isobuster

http://www.isobuster.com/

---------- Post added at 19:12 ---------- Previous post was at 19:11 ----------

The disk may not have been finalised.

Nice thought, but that tool is Windows only ...

[DaiNasty]

I don't think isobuster is available for a Mac but it's still a sound idea. An equivalent data recovery program written for OSX might well read the cd.