Trying To Recover Photos from CD Burning Temporary Files

[Patient Guy]

I need urgent help.

1. I had cut and pasted some music files to a CD-R and then told the
system to write the files to the CD. I believe a wizard opened and I told
it to do the writing.

2. After it finished writing, the CD door opened and I removed the CD. I
put in an empty CD. I then started copying several other files (photos)
to the blank CD.

3. I noticed that the CD writing wizard window still appeared, and it
asked me to click Finish. I did.

4. Then when I went to see the photo files I had put on the CD drive and
to instruct the system to write to them, there were no files in the
"Waiting to be written to CD" category.

5. Frantic, I then tried to go to the Recycle Bin to recover the photo
files that I had cut and pasted to the CD drive. Note that I cut and
pasted, not copy and pasted. I cannot find them in the Recycle Bin.

6. I then learned that files might possibly be in the path "C:\Documents
and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD
Burning". But that directory was completely empty.

I have tried do several searches, including from the C:\ root for the
files, and cannot find them.

I think that click the Finish button from the wizard of the previous
copying has somehow zapped the copying outside of the wizard.

What do I do to recover these files? These are the ONLY copy there was.

In the future, I will OBVIOUSLY have to do a COPY-and-paste and NOT a CUT-
and-paste of images and verify they are burned before I remove them from
the hard disk. I had done cut-and-paste operations on the file system
without this problem before.

 

[Phil Anthropist]

I need urgent help.

1. I had cut and pasted some music files to a CD-R and then told the
system to write the files to the CD. I believe a wizard opened and I told
it to do the writing.

2. After it finished writing, the CD door opened and I removed the CD. I
put in an empty CD. I then started copying several other files (photos)
to the blank CD.

3. I noticed that the CD writing wizard window still appeared, and it
asked me to click Finish. I did.

4. Then when I went to see the photo files I had put on the CD drive and
to instruct the system to write to them, there were no files in the
"Waiting to be written to CD" category.

5. Frantic, I then tried to go to the Recycle Bin to recover the photo
files that I had cut and pasted to the CD drive. Note that I cut and
pasted, not copy and pasted. I cannot find them in the Recycle Bin.

6. I then learned that files might possibly be in the path "C:\Documents
and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CD
Burning". But that directory was completely empty.

I have tried do several searches, including from the C:\ root for the
files, and cannot find them.

I think that click the Finish button from the wizard of the previous
copying has somehow zapped the copying outside of the wizard.

What do I do to recover these files? These are the ONLY copy there was.

In the future, I will OBVIOUSLY have to do a COPY-and-paste and NOT a CUT-
and-paste of images and verify they are burned before I remove them from
the hard disk. I had done cut-and-paste operations on the file system
without this problem before.

3 options as far as I am aware:

1. download a data recovery program and try to recover the files
2. take/send your hard drive to a data recovery company (expensive)
3. accept that the files are gone forever

Regarding 1 and 2, not that the more you use your computer the more it will
write to your hard drive and reduce the chance of recovering files