Plz help. It looks CD-Writer damaged my CDRs

[Tippu]

Plz help me, something strange happened with my CD-Writer and CDR's.

I have a Samsung SW-252 CD-writer and OS is Win XP SP1. Yesterday some strange thing happened as I tried to copy from 3 of my CDR's I burned just few months ago, cd-writer did not detect them. It tried and spinned CDRs but then stopped. I wondered that just 10,15 days ago it was alright and I copied data from those CDR's. Their condtion is new and no scratches at all. It detected one of them but showed it empty. My brother was using my PC before I came. He told me that he did not do anything. But it seems that suddenly something happened to the CD-writer.

I ignored it thinking that CD-Writer has gone out of order. But the real problem started next day when I tried to run those CDR's on many computers in university as well on friends's computers but no one detected them. It seems lens just tried and then stopped. I tried them on computers with CD-Writers and CD-Readers. On computers with CD-Writers, it opened one of them but show it empty just as happened at my PC. On computer with CD-Readers, it does not detect any of them. It is hell strange to me. And no one believes what happened to CDRs. I also tried on DVD-RW/Combo drives, but same result.

It looks as my CR-Writer damaged them or burned them when it tried to open them Is it possible that CD-Writer burn them while trying to read?. But it does not look possible because it did not detect 2 of them at all, detected 1 of them but showed it empty. And how can it wrote without notification on the one it detected? I did not even open the burner software Nero 5.5. After that it did not detect any other CD, also the ordinary CD-ROMS.

About CDRs, 2 of them are Sony and 1 is Verbatim. They were not written on my CD-Writer. My friend did it for me on his computer. He also has a Samsung CD-Writer (I don't remember the model) and burning software was Nero 5.5.
But it does not matter because CDRs were working alright on my computer and on any computer for 6,7 months and I copied data from them many times. What can be the problem. Plz some expert help me. I am badly in trouble. I have my most imprortant data of 5 years on those CDs. Pls someone help to solve the problem or recover my data.

The CDRs were multisession and sessions were not closed, means I did not 'Finalize' them while burning with Nero Burner. Someone said me that after my CD-Writer tried to detect them, it damaged them or changed the session info, and now all CD-Writers and Readers on other computers are not able to read or find the proper session etc. Is it possbile that CD-Writer damaged the session info or write on it etc just by its lens, means just by trying to read CDR's, even when it failed to read and detect 2 of CDR's at all? This is the strange thing.
Now it looks CD-Writers/Readers try to find the place on CDR where to read but could not find. If session info has been damaged, is it possible to restore the session info in any way?

One thing more, I place my all CDs in locked place. So only I use my CDs. And at the incident, I myself put the CDRs in CD-Writer. So there is no question that my brother or someone else did something wrong with them.

The things I have done so far are:
1. Someone told me to use some other OS than XP. I tried it on computers with Win 2000 but it did not work.
2. I have upgraded ASPI drivers to 4.6 but it did not work.
3. People told me to use 'ISObuster', 'CDRoller', 'BadCopy' softwares but the problem is that no CD-Writer/Reader is detecting them, then how can I use some software to recover the data.
4. Someone told me to use 'SessionTracker' to access the particular session. But again I cannot do it because no one is detecting them.

Please help me if you have some clue. I shall be very thankful to you. I am waiting for response.

[Justin42]

When you say they're not detected, what do you mean? If you double click on the drive, does it say there is no disc or what is the exact message you are seeing?

Have you actually tried using the software suggested? It is possible it will detect them, as the problem may lie in the fact the discs were not finalized. The sessions may not have been closed correctly, or may have been closed incorrectly and didn't properly link to any other sessions.

(In my experience... multisession is a bit dangerous. It can make it look like stuff disappears if you're not paying attention-- so much better to just spend a few extra cents and burn on additional CD-Rs).

It IS possible the discs have gone bad. I would put the chances of the CD-RW Drive causing the problem as very, VERY tiny. There is almost no chance it did damage. It's more likely the CDRs themselves are having problems. (Yes, I know you said you were just able to read them, but problems can manifest in strange ways).

So.. try IsoBuster or some of the other software... try to select session "1" off the discs and see if they can be read. It IS possible a disc can be "read" even if it's not showing up as anything in Windows Explorer.