I think I lost My Pictures

[bert913]

I read that to create a backup CD of My Pictures, I should drag the My Pictures desktop shortcut icon to the CD drive shortcut icon and drop it there. I did that.

I closed My Pictures and played the newly created CD. I looked at several pictures.
Confident that my 300 pictures were now safe on the CD, I deleted most of the pictures in My Pictures. Still confident, I emptied the Recycle Bin.

Today I needed a couple pictures from the CD.
I opened the CD and 2Xclicked the My Pictures icon thinking I was going to view the pictures I had put on the CD. Finding only a few pictures I realized that the My Pictures icon on the CD had opened the My Pictures file on the computer.

Can anyone tell me how I can get to the pictures on the CD? As long as that My Pictures icon is on the CD, I don’t know how to get past it. The CD is a CD-R so I can’t remove the icon.

I’m thinking if I could somehow disable the My Pictures on my computer I could get to the pictures on the CD and make a new CD without the My Pictures icon.
Or do it on a different computer that doesn’t have a My Pictures program.

I’m using Windows XP home.

 

[Rabbit01]

It sounds like you copied the shortcut to My Pictures onto your CD. Double click on My Computer, right click on the CD you have supposedly copied your pictures to, then click on Explore. You should be able to browse your pictures. Or instead of clicking on Explore, click on Properties. It should tell you the total MB of pictures. 300 pictures would probably be couple hundred MB. If that's not what you see, then thing didn't go as you hoped.

At this point, you should prepare yourself that some of the pictures might be unrecoverable. Use programs like Recuva or Photorec and see what can be recovered. Better to install these on a USB drive rather than C: (assuming that's where you saved the pictures) and risk overwriting the "deleted files".

 

[WinXPert]

I agree with Rabbit01. Chances to recover your pictures are slim.

 

[bert913]

Gone, gone, gone!

Thanks rabbit01,
When I clicked on Explore or on Open I got the same thing, the My Pictures shortcut and one picture.
I checked Properties and found that only 292 KB were used and 665 MB remained. I guess that’s that.
Oh well, not as bad as it might have been. They weren’t keepsake pictures, just listing pictures for stuff I sell on eBay. Not something I can’t replace.
Thanks again, Have a good one.

 

[Rabbit01]

I've never done click & drag when it comes to burning files to CD/DVD. I've used either CDBurnerXp or Imgburn.

 

[bert913]

A little story about my bad hard drive.

Well apparently the click & drag method don’t work, at least it didn’t work for me.
I was trying to make a CD backup. I read about the drag & drop method on one of those tech. help sites. I want to share my story in hopes it may help someone in the same situation.
I learned a hard lesson about not having a backup a few weeks ago when my computer committed suicide. I took it to the computer shop and they informed me that my hard drive was bad. I asked if my data could be recovered, they said no, it could not be recovered. That’s not what I wanted to hear so I chose not to believe him.
I brought my computer home and removed the hard drive (leaving it connected electrically).
With a digital voltmeter I checked for voltage at the input of the hard drive, it was fine. I checked for voltage at the hard drive motor terminals, there was none. That told me that the hard drive circuit board was bad. I bought a new circuit board off eBay from a company in Canada for $49.95. I sent them my bad circuit board and they transferred the firmware from my old board to the new one at no additional charge. I put the new circuit board in my hard drive, put things back together, plugged it in and turned it on. It booted up fine and works as good as new. If I had listened to the guy at the repair shop, he would have charged me a couple hundred to replace my hard drive and thrown all my data in the trash can. Makes me wonder how much recoverable data has been thrown in the trash. I hope this helps someone, it’s the first time I’ve had anything to contribute here.

 

[mike1959]

Recovering 'deleted' photos...

I have had very good results in the past using the program mentioned above, that is 'Recuva', it's free too.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_recuva

When you are ready to save the images found, as mentioned above, don't save onto your 'C' drive, use a USB stick or an external drive.
Even though you deleted them, your photos are still there, until the data is written over by Windows O/S. or yourself saving some other work.

 

[learninmypc]

I read that to create a backup CD of My Pictures, I should drag the My Pictures desktop shortcut icon to the CD drive shortcut icon and drop it there. I did that.

I closed My Pictures and played the newly created CD. I looked at several pictures.
Confident that my 300 pictures were now safe on the CD, I deleted most of the pictures in My Pictures. Still confident, I emptied the Recycle Bin.

Today I needed a couple pictures from the CD.
I opened the CD and 2Xclicked the My Pictures icon thinking I was going to view the pictures I had put on the CD. Finding only a few pictures I realized that the My Pictures icon on the CD had opened the My Pictures file on the computer.

Can anyone tell me how I can get to the pictures on the CD? As long as that My Pictures icon is on the CD, I don’t know how to get past it. The CD is a CD-R so I can’t remove the icon.

I’m thinking if I could somehow disable the My Pictures on my computer I could get to the pictures on the CD and make a new CD without the My Pictures icon.
Or do it on a different computer that doesn’t have a My Pictures program.

I’m using Windows XP home.

The others can correct me if I'm wrong,but next time I think you should RIGHT click on your My Pictures folder (or whatever you're backing up) & on that menu left click Send to & pick whatever removable media you're using. Flashdrive or ??
Good luck.

 

[bert913]

Thanks

Thanks mike1959,
I’ll take your advice and see what I can do.

 

[bert913]

I got some pictures back

I downloaded Recuva and bought a Flash Deive.
I ran Recuva and recovered 354 squares, 96 had a picture in them, the remaining 258 said “No preview available” or something like that. I sent them all to the Flash Drive.
When I mouse over a picture I get Dimensions, date, time, camera info. JPEG image and size.
When I mouse over those with no picture I get JPEG image and size, nothing else.
Because it says JPEG image and size it seems to me there must be something there. I’ve tried various things but I can’t get any picture.

 

[Rabbit01]

Do you recall whether those w/o thumbnails had green dots next to them after Recuva finished scanning? If you get anything other than green dot, the image won't be recoverable.

 

[mike1959]

Recovering lost jpg's

It's very likely that some of your jpg's will not be recoverable, but many will.
Some 'preview' programs are very 'fussy' about what they will show, so it's worth installing another image viewer to give an option.
I use 'Faststone image viewer' which does all I want, and is a free download from
www.faststone.org
Another thing to try, is to select one of your images, right-click on it, choose 'rename'
and give it a title such as 'rec1.jpg' and that may be enough to make it viewable.
There is a program available for $44 or a free 15 day trial, at;
http://www.download3k.com/Install-JPEG-Recovery.html

I tried it today (Sat 3/9/11) and it downloads from the 'external mirror 1', so that might be worth a try also.
You may be able to recover some images with blank stripes across them, that will be because the data has been written over.
As a general rule, the 'properties' of the image will be a good clue if the picture is there, e.g. something like '350kb' size would mean a .jpg image of 2Mpxl, a size of 2MB would be a jpg image of a 7Mpxl .

 

[bert913]

Green dots

Green dots. I didn’t notice. I’m going to try the Faststone and see what happens.

 

[bert913]

I've had it, I'm through, I'm done!

I want to thank those that tried to help me recover my deleted pictures.
I’ve decided that those pictures aren’t worth the aggravation. I am simply not computer savvy enough to do this.
I installed Recuva File Recovery and turned it loose on my C:/ drive. It said it recovered 8436 files. I’m not so sure about that but there were a lot of them. About 95% of the thumbnail boxes were either blank, had “No Preview Available”, or had some unrecognizable image. Most of the actual pictures, I didn’t recognize.
I installed FastStone Image Viewer. That’s probably a fine program but after hours reading the Tutorial, I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to get a single picture into that program.
I’m a PhotoImperssion3 kinda guy. That’s a basic, simple to use editing program. It seems to me there’s only so much you can do to a picture no matter how elaborate the editing program is.
Please, don’t waste any more of your time trying to help. I’m through with this project.

 

[learninmypc]

I want to thank those that tried to help me recover my deleted pictures.
I’ve decided that those pictures aren’t worth the aggravation. I am simply not computer savvy enough to do this.
I installed Recuva File Recovery and turned it loose on my C:/ drive. It said it recovered 8436 files. I’m not so sure about that but there were a lot of them. About 95% of the thumbnail boxes were either blank, had “No Preview Available”, or had some unrecognizable image. Most of the actual pictures, I didn’t recognize.
I installed FastStone Image Viewer. That’s probably a fine program but after hours reading the Tutorial, I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to get a single picture into that program.
I’m a PhotoImperssion3 kinda guy. That’s a basic, simple to use editing program. It seems to me there’s only so much you can do to a picture no matter how elaborate the editing program is.
Please, don’t waste any more of your time trying to help. I’m through with this project.

The best of luck down the road.:grinthumb