Rescuing Lost Files from CDs and DVDs

Transcription

1 Rescuing Lost Files from CDs and DVDs R 200 / 1 Damaged CD? No Problem Let this Clever Software Recover Your Files! CDs and DVDs are among the most reliable types of computer disk to use for storing your files, but even so they are not perfect. It just takes a tiny scratch or grease spot in the wrong place, or an error in copying the files to the disk, for Windows to insist that the disk is empty! Fortunately, if the worst happens, a useful free program named CD Recovery Toolbox can make light work of retrieving files from the damaged disk. Read on to learn how to install and use CD Recovery Toolbox. By Don Levison What Can Go Wrong with CDs and DVDs?... How to Install CD Recovery Toolbox... Use CD Recovery Toolbox to Rescue Lost Files... This article shows you how to: Windows All R 200 / 2 R 200 / 4 R 200 / 6... Install the free CD Recovery Toolbox software from the CD-ROM... Use CD Recovery Toolbox to recover files from damaged CDs and DVDs You can install CD Recovery Toolbox from the Update 5/09 CD-ROM in the Update Software section 55

2 R 200 / 2 CDs and DVDs are much more resilient than floppy disks Things do sometimes go wrong Scratches and marks can make a disk unreadable What Can Go Wrong with CDs and DVDs? In comparison with the humble floppy disk, CDs and DVDs are wonderful things. Not only can they store vastly more data, but they do it reliably. Floppy disks are notorious for suddenly ceasing to work, even when they ve been handled and stored carefully, and perhaps only used once or twice. CDs and DVDs are seemingly indestructible you can throw them around with casual abandon and they ll often soldier on cheerfully. (Of course, I m not suggesting you should do that, though!) Although they do seem to be amazingly resilient, things can still go wrong with these disks, and when they do you can find that particular files on the disk become impossible to access. In the worst cases, you may not be able to get at any of the files on the disk at all. Just as we always advise you to keep backup copies of the personal files stored on your hard disk, the same advice applies to files stored on any type of disk. If they are files you really wouldn t want to lose, one copy isn t enough! If files are going to be stored on a CD or DVD and nowhere else, it s wise to take a little extra time and burn two copies of the disk just in case something goes wrong with one of them. The main risk to CDs and DVDs is that of scratches and marks on the shiny side of the disk the side that contains the data. However, you can never quite tell what s going to cause a problem and what isn t: a disk with a large, obvious scratch may continue to work perfectly, while one with a small and almost-invisible scratch won t. 56

3 R 200 / 3 The result of a scratch or mark may be that one or two of the files on the disk can t be accessed, but it may also be that Windows can t see any of the files on the disk at all. If you have problems reading a CD or DVD, the first thing to do is to remove it from the drive and give it a clean. Hold the disk only by its edges, shiny side up, breathe on it gently and use a soft clean cloth to wipe it in straight lines from the centre hole to the outside edge. (Don t wipe it in circles following the lines on the disk.) You ll often find that after giving the disk a quick clean and popping it back in the drive it works as it should. The second thing that can go wrong with these types of disk is a mistake in the way the files are stored. When you copy files to a CD or DVD you can choose to create something called a multisession disk. This is a method by which you can copy a group of files to the disk in one go (or session ), and then sometime later add some more files to the disk, and continue doing this until the disk is full. When this is done properly, all the files you copied to the disk in those various sessions should be visible and accessible, as if you d copied the whole lot there in one action. However, when you copy the second and subsequent groups of files to the disk you must remember to specify in your software s settings that you want to continue a multi-session disk that already contains some files. If you don t, the files from any earlier sessions will seemingly disappear and you ll only see the files copied in the latest session. In this situation, the files you copied to the disk in the earlier sessions are Multi-session disks can cause problems if you forget to keep previous sessions 57

4 R 200 / 4 actually still there the problem is simply that Windows can t see them. Fortunately, this is less likely to happen than you might expect, because modern software should do its best to prevent it. When you try to add more files to a CD or DVD that already contains files from an earlier session, the software should point this out to you and let you know that those earlier files will become inaccessible if you continue. You can then cancel the process and look for an option in the software s settings to continue a multi-session disk (or very similar wording) before continuing. If cleaning the disk doesn t solve the problem, or you have inadvertently lost access to files copied to the disk in a previous session, Windows itself can t do much to help you. What you need is a program designed to find and retrieve lost files from a CD or DVD a program like CD Recovery Toolbox, which is included on the accompanying CD-ROM. How to Install CD Recovery Toolbox There are quite a few programs available that aim to recover files from damaged CDs and DVDs, but CD Recovery Toolbox has two big advantages over many of them: first, it s very easy to install and use; and second, it s completely free. I ll begin by showing you how to install it, and then explain the steps to follow when you have a problem with a CD/DVD. However, you don t have to install it right away: although it only takes a very tiny amount of space on your hard disk, you may prefer to wait until you actually need to use it and install it then. 58

5 R 200 / 5 If you would like to install CD Recovery Toolbox, just follow these steps: 1. Insert your Update 5/09 CD into your CD- ROM drive, choose Update Software followed by CD Recovery Toolbox, and click the blue link that says Click here to install CD Recovery Toolbox. 2. The installation steps are straightforward. Click Next to move past the introductory step, then select the option labelled I accept the agreement and click Next three more times to move through the next few steps without changing anything along the way. 3. Now you ll reach the step pictured in the following screenshot, which offers to create extra icons for the program on your desktop and on the Quick Launch bar beside the Start button. You really don t need either of these extra icons: you won t be using the program very often, so there s no point in having its icons cluttering up your screen. Remove the ticks beside both options and then click Next. Remove the ticks from these options Click Next 4. In the next step, click the Install button and CD Recovery Toolbox will be installed, which only takes a few seconds. 59

6 R 200 / 6 5. Now you ll arrive at the final step which offers to start the program straight away, as pictured in the next screenshot. It s up to you whether you want to have a look at the program right now: if you don t (or you do, but you re happy to run it yourself from the Start menu, as I ll explain in a moment), remove the tick beside Launch CD Recovery Toolbox Free. Remove this tick if you don t want to start the program straight away 6. Finally, click the Finish button and you re done. Click Finish Success isn t guaranteed! Use CD Recovery Toolbox to Rescue Lost Files When you re unable to access one or more files on a CD or a DVD, or you re convinced that the disk contains more files than you can see, but Windows insists they re not there, CD Recovery Toolbox should be able to recover them for you. I say should because there are no guarantees of success. Like any other program, CD Recovery Toolbox can t recover data that isn t there for example, data that really has been destroyed by a scratch. However, it may well recover files that weren t directly affected by the scratch when Windows won t acknowledge that those files even exist. To use CD Recovery Toolbox to recover files from a disk, follow these steps: 60

7 R 200 / 7 1. First, make sure the CD or DVD with which you re having problems is in your computer s CD/DVD drive. 2. Open the Start menu and go to All Programs (or Programs) > CD Recovery Toolbox FREE and click the CD Recovery Toolbox FREE item to start the program. 3. When the program starts, it will display a list of the CD/DVD drives connected to your PC which currently contain disks, as pictured in the next screenshot.the odds are that your PC only has one of these drives (or, if it has two, that there s no disk in the other) so you ll probably see only one item in this list. Make sure the item relating to the drive containing your problematic disk is selected and then click Next. Select the drive containing your CD or DVD Click Next 4. In the next step, you ll see a screen headed Target Directory which contains some technical-looking information. This step allows you to choose where CD Recovery Toolbox should store any files it rescues from the CD/DVD. The default location is a folder named _CDRestored on your main hard disk (named C: ) and you shouldn t need to change this, so you can simply click Next again to move to the following step. 61

8 R 200 / 8 Choose which files to recover It s worth noting for clarity that CD Recovery Toolbox can t actually repair a CD or DVD as such an unreadable disk won t be made readable. Instead what the program does is to copy the files it can access to your hard disk, allowing you to use them and, perhaps, copy them to another disk. 5. CD Recovery Toolbox now scans your CD or DVD to make a list of all the files it contains. After a short pause you ll arrive at the step pictured in the next screenshot, showing a list of the files and folders on the disk.you ll notice that each item in the list has a checkbox to its left, and you use these checkboxes to tick off the files and folders you want to recover: If you tick a folder, all the files it contains will automatically be ticked too. In other words, you re specifying that you want to recover every file in that folder, if possible. You can also tick and untick individual files according to whether or not you want to try to recover them. You can use the Check All button further down to tick everything in the list in one quick action. Similarly, the Uncheck All button removes the ticks from everything to let you start this step again. Tick the files and folders you want to recover or click this button to tick every item Click Save 62

9 R 200 / 9 6. When you ve ticked off the items you want CD Recovery Toolbox to try to recover, click the Save button at the bottom of the window. 7. Now you ll see the step pictured in the next screenshot, which shows the program s progress in recovering your files. There s nothing you need to do at this point but wait. Once the program has finished working through the list of files, the progress panel in the middle of the window will disappear leaving a list of all the filenames and a note of whether each was saved successfully. The list shows you which files were recovered Click Exit to close the program 8. By all means have a look through the program s list to see how the recovery process went, but something more useful happens. The program automatically opens the folder in which it saved the files it was able to recover, so you ll see that folder window and, with luck, the files you thought were lost appear on your screen. The folder containing your files will be opened 9. You ve now finished with the CD Recovery Toolbox program, so you can click the Exit button at the bottom of its window to close it. If you lose track of the folder containing your recovered files, you can easily open it again. Open 63

10 R 200 / 10 Always check the rescued files! It s best to move them to a different folder the Computer or My Computer icon on your Start menu or desktop, then double-click the icon for your hard disk (named C: ). Among the folders you see there should now be one named _CDRestored (and the underscore at the beginning of its name should usually make it the very first folder in the window). Double-click this folder to open it and you ll see your recovered files. Although it may seem that your files have been recovered successfully, be sure to work your way through them, opening and checking each in turn, before assuming that all is well. For example, if the CD was damaged in some way, don t throw it away just yet! If the recovered files to seem to be complete and correct, you can decide what to do with them from here. You ll probably want to burn them to a new CD or DVD, but you may prefer to keep them on your hard disk instead. If you do want to keep them on your hard disk, I d suggest moving them to a different location such as your Documents or My Documents folder. It s best not leave them in that _CDRestored folder, because if you ever have to use CD Recovery Toolbox again it will save the new files to that same folder, mingling them with the current files, and things could get a bit confusing! An alternative to moving the files out of that folder is simply to give the folder a different name. After opening the Computer/My Computer icon followed by your hard disk s icon, right-click that _CDRestored folder and choose Rename. You can then type a new name for the folder something short but descriptive enough to tell you what it contains and then press Enter. 64