noob

cancervic

New Member
Hi everyone,
I'm new to this forum although I post occasionally in a motorcycle forum since I ride bikes.
I have a general question to ask for a friend. I'm in the older generation which means I didn't have the benefit of growing up with computers everywhere. But I own several and realize the importance of having some computer literacy.
My question is about CD-R's. My friend has a couple CD-R's he thought were backups of some of his photos. Recently, his computer crashed and the culprit was the Maxtor HD (junk). It's not known if the crash was preceded by any virus since his wife had the HD formatted only a few weeks prior to the crash due to a 'virus'. These CD-R's now read zero used space and zero free space. He's certain there were photos on them. I can't access anything on my computer, either. Is there any possibility of retrieving these photos? I know CD-R's can't be rewritten but is there files that can be accessed if my friend insists there were photos on them? Thanks.

cancervic
 
"R" stands for "recordable" and "RW" stands for "rewritable". CD-Rs can't be rewritten.

YOu could try the CDs on another system - some older drives can't read CD-Rs/RWs properly, and it could also be a software glitch. Also, if the CDs are, say, more than 2 years old and they've been poorly stored, all the data might be gone, though normally the contents should last longer than that.
 
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