SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!! (I MEAN IT!)

[nerie]

Oh my!

I blanked and rewrote over a very precious CD-RW disk. Is it possible to get the data back? This could turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life (3 years of photos, including the birth of my only son!) Oh my GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jimmalenko]

Yes. But ..............

With both RW discs and hard drives, when you reformat, the data is still there until it is written over. So there would be a chance that at least some of the previous contents on the disc might be accessible/recoverable. I normally use a program called GetDataBack for this.

[Capmaster]

I sympathize with your emergency, but please don't use all caps in the topic title. It's very annoying. Thanks

If you did a quick erase only you might have a chance of recovering it, since that only erases the CD-RW equivalent of the file allocation table, like jimmalenko mentioned. THe data remains.

However, if you actually rewrote new data on the disc it's not likely you'll ever see it again

[Shocker Milwaukee]

I blanked and rewrote over

The kiss of death...

[Headbanger's Ball]

You kept precious photos on an RW????

[lordsmurf]

You wrote over it. No. It's gone.

[tweedledee]

Is it possible that the original was left on the hard drive when it was first burnt? Providing it was a recent burn.

[Red96TA]

Tweedledee...

an interesting concept. If an image of the original burn was somewhere on the HD, then it COULD be possible to find them...

But, I have to emphasize, that the possiblilities are slim.

[ZAPPER]

Pretty much anything that has been written over is gone. Anything not written over is iffy. Check your PC for hidden files, like the burning programs history or my photos or any place that might have anything to do with the time that you put the files on the cd. Three years is a long time for files not to have moved or scattered around your hard drive so don't get your hopes up. Maybe you made a back up and gave it granny that you forgot about?

[nerie]

OK, an update.

Through the graces of God, I was able to recover most of the photos from my HD with GetDataBack. However, I would like to try data recovery from the CD-RW. Does GetDataBack allow me to perform this operation. I know, I know, I'm an idiot and should not have put the photos on an RW and then wrote over them, don't kick me when I'm down, please.

[Cobra]

I sympathise with you - I did something similar. I had no backups of my photos, and accidentally shift-deleted the whole lot. Fortunately, I live with two computer scientists so I got it all back. Lucky.

I now make DVD-R backups in duplicate of all my precious data.

So, is it all sorted now?

Cobra

EDIT - Just moved this topic into the Computer forum.

[nerie]

how can I do the data recovery process on my CD-RW? I am encouraged from recovering a chunk of it from my HD.

[Garibaldi]

I use a program called PC Inspector Smart Recovery:
http://www.download.com/PC-Inspector-Smart-Recovery/3000-2242_4-10261986.html?tag=lst-0-1
for some reason every now and then my xD picture card would say that it was unformatted after I had just gotten done taking a bunch of pictures and tried to upload then. PC Inspector allowed me to recover 99 percent of them. I had not reformatted yet, which was good because I don't think I could have gotten them back after a reformat. Anyway, its worth a try.