Photo recovery software

About a year ago I put my computer on a diet and burned a lot of photos to a Memorex CD-R disk. I got it out the other day to look for a few photos I knew were on the disk. When it booted up, the only thing showing was a "Non-Allocatable List " containing a 0 KB file. I checked the disk properties and it showed that it had 576 MB of used space and zero free space.

I searched here with WBBS for anything having to do with "Non-Allocatable List" and I did not find anything. I searched the web for the same and all I found were sites that were totally out of my realm of comprehension. I then did a search for photo recovery software. This actually worked to a point. I was able to view thumbnails of the photos on the disk but would have to pay from $30 -$60 to save the photos to my computer.

My question is this. Is there a way to retrieve my photos other then with photo recovery software? If that is my only choice why the large spread in price for obtaining the same result?

Would it be better in the future to save large files of photos to a USB memory stick instead of a CD-R disk? Could the same thing happen to a memory stick which would make buying photo recovery software eaiser to swollow if it is a tool that may be needed in the future. I hate to put out dollars for a one time use tool.

If anyone has a solution to this "Non-Allocatable List" problem or has some wisdom to the purchase of recovery soft ware - type, brand,experience etc. I would really appriciate your imput.

Thank you,
TRoof

 

Reading through a number of Google searches, the error "Non-Allocatable List" may be caused by disk being formatted / written by Packet Cd formatted CD (UDF). Can you remember what program you used to burn info to CD.

 

First for broni, I tried the recovery toolbox and it only opened the disk and showed the Non-Allocatable List as the only file on the CD. That was as far as it went.

Next to Dennis L. If I remember correctly I used B's Recorder Gold on my old Toshiba with an external Sony CD burner. I probably did fromat the disk and it was a CD-RW disk not a CD-R as I originaly stated. I have tried to run it on my old system with the same results.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for both replys.

TRoof

 

Thanks Tony- I have downloaded and run the PhotoRec program. I seem to have recovered some photos but not all. There were a lot of text files with photo and camera information. Time,date,shutter speed,image size etc. When I used a -free to try- and -pay to save- program there seemed to be more of the photos recovered. This process takes quite a bit of time so I will do the pay to save program once again and compare the two.

At this moment I am trying to use the PC Inspector program but it doesn't seem to recoginze Drive D in the Logical Drive tab. In the Physical Drive Tab it does show a windows drive D but with only 144 MB. ( When I go to my computer and click properties of the disk in drive D it shows used space of 576 MB.) When I click on drive D at this point a find logical drive button is activated. When I click this button it opens a slect sector range window with a size to scan of 195.31 MB. I leave every thing the way it is and click the check sign. At this point it opens another window Find Logical Drives- Pleas Wait. It then shows something like 23000 minutes remaining and then in a blink of an eye it decreases 13000 minutes and then 85 minutes and in another second it closes and I am returned to the select drive window. Is it posible I am not qualified to run this program?

I am assuming that you have some experience with both applications. If not, then none of the last that I wrote probably makes much sence.

Thanks for the imput.

TRoof

 

Update to close this thread.

I finally went with a free to see and pay to use digital image recovery software web site. After many downloads and free recovery attempts, I setteled on -eIMAGE RECOVERY- that cost $27 and worked very well.
I now have about %99 of the photos ( some were damaged beyond repair).

Over and out,
TRoof