Disc Problems

Hi
I have recently returned from Canada were I had my images from my ixus v2 downloaded on to disc. On returning to Australia I was able to view the pictures without a problem. Now when I insert and try to read the disc it does not read the disc saying that the disc is empty. I have tried this on several computers with the same result. I now the pics are still on there. As these pictures are invaluable to me is there any way that the pics can be recovered.

What kind of disc are you referring to? Compact Disc? Floppy Disc? If it's a CD, is it possible the surface of the disc was somehow scratched or otherwise damaged in a way that would make it unreadable? If you're using a PC (as opposed to a Mac), can you see any signs of data when examining the disc through Windows Explorer? Do you have a program that can copy the contents of the CD to a hard drive, in order to make another CD?

The disc is a CD-R (2 discs that were burnt at the same camera shop) all other discs that I downloaded pictures onto on the same trip are okay. There is no data present so that I can copy them onto another disc.

Did you leave them in the sunshine?
UV is very bad for CD-Rs... (heat also...)

Was this disc protected against scratches or other imperfections marring the underside? The only thing I can think of, based on your earlier comment that the pictures recorded on to this CD were viewable initially, is that the recording surface was damaged.

I do know there are places that can probably recover your data; first thing I'd do is try and locate a smart kid, perferably a computer nerd, who could probably use some utility he has to give you an idea of what's going on with your CD. I have no doubt that the data is still on the CD, but it may be that the file allocation data area has been damaged so as to give you a false result. I've never worked with a damaged CD but I used to use DOS utilities to get information off floppy disks that had been damaged. The old DOS Norton utilities were good at this.