cd-rw disk problems

[bigrideman]

i have a lot of stuff i have put on CD.  And for some reason know when i put them in my drive they say there is nothing on them.  What am i doing wrong.  what do i do to solve it.

[patio]

When you burn a project to CD/DVD you have to finalise the burn...otherwise the CD shows as empty...
What app are you burning with ? ?

[truenorth]

I presume that your statement "for some reason know" (that know =now) . That being so the current situation is "new" and that they previously could be read. Is that true? Are you trying to read them on the same computer that they were created on? Plus patio's question.
truenorth

[bigrideman]

i did not burn anything i formatted the disc and put the files on them know when i look at them they say there empty and not sure if it was this computer or another

[truenorth]

With respect are we dealing with a mother tongue (yours) that is other than English? The reason i ask this question is your statement "i did not burn anything i formatted the disc and put the files on them". What you have just described is "burning " to a disc. Taking a blank cd(-R;+R or RW ) and with the use of a software program placing data (could be music/data/video) on the disc (recorded to the disc via an optical device such as what is commonly referred to as a "cd burner". Is that not what you did? By your process have you EVER been able to read from  such a disc? truenorth

[bigrideman]

yes i was able to view the cd in the past and i am pretty sure it was on another computer

[Transfusion]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321641#letmefixit


From the Microsoft site-"How to troubleshoot common problems that occur when a Windows-XP based computer cannot read a burned CD/DVD."

[TheShadow]

Only a suggestion:

Never use RW disks.  They may only be readable on the drive that wrote them and with the software that wrote them.

Use CD-R (ROM) disks and always finalize them, when done writing.
 Don't even use Multi-Session..... again that can get real iffy (hazardous).

Only use a well known and trusted burning software like "Nero" for the most reliable recording (Burn),
that's reliable to read on any CD/DVD drive anywhere.

This suggestion is based on my many years of experience with CD's and DVD's. (20+ years)
That includes BAD experiences as well as good ones.   I gave away the last RW disks that I had in the house.

Good Luck!

 

[Salmon Trout]

What's all this stuff about "burning" disks? Yes, I know about Nero Burning Rom, etc. But has everybody else on here forgotten about UDF, the Windows Drive Letter Access thing? Packet writing, where you "format" an R or an RW disk and just drag stuff to it in the Windows GUI? Could be Nero InCD or the Windows XP  I think the OP is probably telling the truth when he says they didn't "burn" anything. Most PC systems from Dell, HP, IBM, Sony and Toshiba come with DLA pre-installed or prepared for installation.

bigrideman, the disks may have become unreadable. If you did use the drag and drop CDRW method I mentioned above, then there are tools you can try, including MiniTool Power Data Recovery which has a free version which supports UDF

http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/download.html

[truenorth]

ST-never thought of that.Let's hope you are right (and that the O/P comes back to clarify). truenorth

[patio]

IsoBuster works great for retrieving dat on both types of burned CD's...no matter what app is used.
Not sure there is still a Free version floating around there so search it out.