Archiving and retrival probs...

Art Scott

I have been archiving my files for quite some time on CD...mostly memorex, tdk, sony....and wanted to upgrade my archives to MAM-A gold (as I have worked with them for over 5 yrs) as they are the best archival CD / DVD out there.

Here is my prob....load CD into DVD / CD rom....place new gold DVD in burner....go to burning software, load the project and clik burn....then clik read only, then burn again.....we be burning.....then the errors start....most an error that says it is an INVALID MS-DOS function......okay scrapped one dvd.....

Second try...this time to just copy to hdd....basicily same errors......getting P/O'd

Go to adobe file....open DNG converter....bring up CD file and tell it to place on Drive E...... looking good as it starts the conversion of 117 raw files......then it errors out 67 of 117 converted.....now it states a file redundancy error.....

These forty it did not convert are scattered thru out the middle of the cd.

Does any one have any suggestions as to how I might be able to recover these files.

BTW the cd looks new (event tho it is almost 2yrs old) except for the files that are burnt into it.

Ric Grupe

Don't know what to say about your difficulties that could be of use to you. I gave up archiving to CD's. Get a good USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive.

There is an article at Luminous-Landscape that might interest you.

wxwax

Art, I assume you've tried opening each file individually?

Art Scott

Ric Grupe wrote:

Don't know what to say about your difficulties that could be of use to you. I gave up archiving to CD's. Get a good USB 2.0 or Firewire hard drive.

There is an article at Luminous-Landscape that might interest you.

Thanks for the link will give it a close read.

UUUhhhhh....I have filled 2 120 hdds and working on a 300gb..but after talking to several Pros, here in KS and also In Cali and reading a few articles in Photo Pro and Photo dist. news and else where, DVD / Cd media archiving is still recommended highly.

Wxwax.....yes thes same files error on the open to pscs also.....I found a recovery program however it did not recover the the files that are erroring on me....

Ric Grupe

Art Scott wrote:

Thanks for the link will give it a close read.
UUUhhhhh....I have filled 2 120 hdds and working on a 300gb..but after talking to several Pros, here in KS and also In Cali and reading a few articles in Photo Pro and Photo dist. news and else where, DVD / Cd media archiving is still recommended highly.

Maybe an index contact sheet and negatives wasn't all that bad!

Art Scott

Ric Grupe wrote:

Maybe an index contact sheet and negatives wasn't all that bad!

I have given thought to going back to Med Format...beleive me I have.....but damn digital is so much less expensive in so many ways.......BUT AGAIN.....I look at all the 35mm and 2 1/4 negs and slides that need to be scanned and even all those family pics that no longer have or ever had negs that need to be scanned for future generations and I just cry and it aint purty to see a grown man cry

David_S85

Art, do the files on the CD's open on any other computer?

Art Scott

That I have not had a chance to try.....did find a win forum that was talking about the same errors but with avi files and it said to try an old win98se machine if one can be found.....so I am currently email friends to see if any has even a lapt top still using 98se.

LuckyBob

You could try running Knoppix on your machine; it's a Linux distribution which runs exclusively from CD - I've used it on several occasions to pull data off of corrupted hard drives. Just burn the downloaded ISO to CD (which any halfway capable CD burning program should be able to do) and boot from it.
Once in Knoppix open the CD-ROM drive and try to open / copy the files off the CD on to your HD. Good luck!

Jamoke

LuckyBob wrote:

You could try running Knoppix on your machine; it's a Linux distribution which runs exclusively from CD - I've used it on several occasions to pull data off of corrupted hard drives. Just burn the downloaded ISO to CD (which any halfway capable CD burning program should be able to do) and boot from it.
Once in Knoppix open the CD-ROM drive and try to open / copy the files off the CD on to your HD. Good luck!

K - I stumbled onto this thread with a similar problem - What program did you use within the Knoppix build? I have it loaded, but I don't see any restoration or archival programs in this build. Am I missing something?

mwgrice

Jamoke wrote:

K - I stumbled onto this thread with a similar problem - What program did you use within the Knoppix build? I have it loaded, but I don't see any restoration or archival programs in this build. Am I missing something?

I think he's suggesting that you don't need any special utilities--just the regular Knoppix file utilities. It's been a while, but I believe a file manager opens by default (and there's always "cp" at a command prompt). It's probably worth a shot.

However, first I'd try it in other CD-ROM drives. Sometimes a different drive will be able to read a problematic CD-ROM. I've had plenty of CD-ROMs work just fine on some machines and terribly or not at all on others.

From what you said, the CD-ROM looks clean and free of fingerprints and scratches, so that's probably out.

LuckyBob

There's a few things you can do (although I've only personally had to do the first :):

1) If Knoppix picks up the CD as a readable device, you can just double-click it and copy & paste data from the CD-R to the ramdisk Knoppix creates, a thumbdrive, accross the network (via Samba to another Windows box), or burn it to another CD. See http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Using_FAQ, in particular the parts about copying data accross the network and accessing files created with other operating systems.

2) Try using the program CDFS (at http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/~ronsse/cdfs/); it will basically export the data off the CD-R (it can get at most data).

3) For hard disks - I havn't seen a CD file system module for this program - you can use gpart (built into Knoppix). Gpart tries to guess what type of data is on the disk and will allow you to copy it somewhere else for later repair.

*Standard disclaimer*: Don't blame me if it breaks something