Corrupt CD, Trying to get files off, need help
 

A friend of mine took some pictures with a digital camera, she saved all those pictures on to a CD. She then brought it to Wal-Mart to get pictures printed off. She put the CD in and I couldn't bring up any files. She then brought it home and the same thing happened. She really needs these pictures so I said I would try to get them off of there. I stuck it in my computer and it won't mount. I need some help to get these files off, I have never done this before. Anyone got any ideas?

Did your friend check that the data was really written to CD? Can the CD be read by the original writer? Is there a temporary (or a copy of) a file somewhere when she wrote the CD?

You can also try the 'dares' tool; maybe disable automounting first so the machine doesn't go crazy spinning the disc when it's put in.

Yes turn off any automounting services, but I do not know what pinniped mean after that. I recommend run dd_rescue to make an image of the disk. Probably may need to start the end of the disc with dd_rescue to get pass any errors. Then use photorec to scan the image file to try to extract files from the image file. If files are proprietary or files that photorec does not know, it will not retrieve them.

If nothing can be retrieved by photorec, then you have layers of problems. One did your friend may sure the images were on the disc by checking them on a different computer. If your friend did, then complain to Walmart. I think Walmart has a upload feature for printing pictures. That will be the safest for next time. If the disc has a lot of scratches, I suggest buy the following device.

OptoClear Skip-away Pro Disc Repair System (PNV4000)
http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/S...roductID=20418

If that is too much, the SkipDr can be used, but it is a one time only fix with this device and the disc is more prone to scratches.

How do I turn off automounting
 

How do I turn off automount?

How you disable automount depends on which automount software you have running. In KDE you go to the control panel and somewhere in the "storage" section there is a box to turn off the automount.

You can also try using foremost on the device, I've found it to outdo any other kind of recovery program.

you could try using dd_rescue to create an iso file with as much rescued data as possible, and then try mouting it, or you could use TestDisk.

Yves.

Here's one more rescue program for you: recoverjpeg.

I'd also keep trying it out in different drives, because some are capable of reading bad disks better than others. I had some corrupt homemade video dvds that wouldn't recopy using any of the drives I had, but when I later tried them out on a newer system I'd just finished building, with a new sata dvd drive, they all copied perfectly.

Finally, to avoid similar problems in the future, be sure to not use cheap media or burn your disks at high speed (I had done both in the above case). Always use good quality disks and reduce the writing speed to the slowest possible speed so that the laser has time to cleanly burn the data track.

And in the future, you may want to use Dvdisaster. Had your friend done so, recovering would have been a breeze.
http://dvdisaster.sourceforge.net/

Yves.

I also recommend this program, it's very cool.