Recovering Lost Pictures

[cameraclick]

Hello. My situation is that I saved thousands of pics on a CD that got badly scratched (just on one part, which is on top of the CD). No computers will play it. The pictures are no longer on the computer. However, on Photoshop Elements, the pics are still displayed as thumbnail previews. That leaves me to believe that there's a temp file somewhere which is holding these pictures. Just having a hard time locating them.

Luckily they were pictures which weren't my favorites, but it's still thousands of hours of scanning gone.

Wondering if you may have a suggestion as to where these temp files may be stored.

With much thanks,
Cameraclick

[Mack]

A couple of links that may help in terms of recovery.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/cdrecovery.html
http://www.qahn.org/uploads/qahn_manual.pdf/Salvaging%20Damaged%20Media.pdf

If the pictures were stored at one time on your hard drive and you have not done a lot of writing since you may be able to recover many of the pictures. There are data recovery programs just for this.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/undeleteplus.html

I am not sure about the thumbnails but assume they are of v low resolution and therefore of limited usefulness.

Good Luck and let us know if are able to recover any pictures.

Don

[Byron Gale]

cameraclick,

You've learned the hard way that the label side of a CD is the most vulnerable portion. That is where the plastic is the thinnest and easiest to damage - ruining the data layers below.

What version of PSE to do you have? Maybe we can direct you to where the thumbnails are stored. You won't have full-resolution images, but you may end up with something.

Byron

[dj_paige]

This doesn’t address the original problem, however FWIW, I not only backup to DVD, but also to my website (which is also an FTP site). The backups on the website are managed by the website hosting company, and the hosting company also makes backups of all files, so as long as I keep paying the $6/month to maintain that website, I have a set of backup of my photos and other important files that cannot be damaged if my home is struck by fire, flood, earthquake, or cheese wiz.

[cameraclick]

I appreciate everyone's replies. You're right. I did learn a good lesson. I was in the process of moving and was rushing & tried to carry out as much as possible. I put the CD in my coat pocket, which had keys in it!!! I was able to recover some files on the hard drive with undelete (about half). I really appreciate it. The CD was unrecognized by the computer, so couldn't be recovered.


The version of Photoshop Elements is 3.0

Being high res doesn't matter with this batch of pics. The purpose of the scanning project was to toss photographs that were taking up physical space. They weren't my favorites, but since it took such a long time I wanted to recover them.

(I did learn a good lesson about time management as well).

[Walter]

Hello. My situation is that I saved thousands of pics on a CD that got badly scratched (just on one part, which is on top of the CD). No computers will play it.

With much thanks,
Cameraclick

Try the free download of isoBuster at
http://www.isobuster.com/isobuster.php