Bob Jensen's First-Time Experience With Isobuster File Recovery
Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

For years I've used a Sony camera to produce over a hundred mini CDs in that camera. Many samples of my work are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

The procedure is to insert a CD-RW disk into the camera and "Initialize" the disk. Then pictures are stored and can be viewed in the camera itself. They cannot be transferred to a computer file until they are "Finalized" in the camera itself. Normally I have about 50-100 photographs before finalization.

Between March and mid-June of 2013, however, I carelessly put well over 200 pictures on the camera's disk. I could view these pictures and worried that I may have too many on a single disk. I had no hope other than to cross my fingers and "Finalize" the disk inside the camera.

This is what happened after finalization.

  1. I read the finalized CD-RW disk in three different computers. Each computer claimed there were only three picture files on the disk even though I knew there were over 200 picture files that I could view in the camera before the finalization process. The pictures could not be viewed in the camera after finalization, and the option to "Unfinalized" would not work even though it works for other disks.
     
  2. Before throwing the disk away I went online to forums about recovering lost files. I encountered a forum message from a person who claimed to have limited success in recovering lost files using Isobuster. I downloaded the free version of Isobuster. I later purchased, for $39, a product key, but I've still not used that key. Thus far I've only used the free version ---
    http://www.isobuster.com/isobuster.php
     
  3. To my relief Isobuster revealed that it detected many files on the disk, thereby giving me hope that I maybe had not lost over 200 of my most-recent pictures. I then ran Isobuster for 18 continuous hours and became somewhat discouraged. Isobuster transfers all the detected CD files to a hard drive and seeks to "recover" those files on the hard drive.
     
  4. At long last I got a report, but the report said there were still "missing gaps" on the disk. I then ran "Find the Missing Gaps" repeatedly on Isobuster continuously for nearly two more days.
     
  5. Finally, I just stopped the process of finding "missing gaps" and decided to view what Isobuster had accomplished after nearly three days of continuous computing.
     
  6. Isobuster is not user friendly, so please don't ask me for help in using the program. I cannot tell you all the nearly random things I tried until miraculously I got a list of "575 recovered files" that were all jpeg pictures. That was discouraging since I knew this was nearly three times the number of picture files that were on the original CD.
     
  7. Then when viewing the images  I found multiple image files for each recovered picture. For a given file some of the recovered versions were clearly damaged. But there were usually 1-3 good versions. The "good versions" seem to be perfect reproductions. You can view my best copies of 231 recovered pictures at
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/2013June/
     
  8. I can't be certain what percentage of the jpeg photograph files were recovered with at least one good copy, but I think it's well above 90%. I recall a few photographs that were not recovered, particularly about ten pictures of a male bluebird who kept pecking at his reflection in the window beside my desk. None of my bluebird pictures were recovered by Isobuster. Some others are missing such as pictures of a fallen pine tree.
     
  9. In summary I am happy with Isobuster, although I wish it was more user friendly. The good news is that it found the missing files on my CD-RW and, after three days of "filling in the gaps" gave me usable versions of over 90% of my lost pictures. Sure beats losing all the pictures.
     
  10. My old camera still works fine for a new CD-RW disk in terms of initialization and finalization. My problem with this one particular CD-RW disk is that I put too many photographs (well over 231) on the disk before finalization. I've never tried to finalize more than 100 photographs on previous disks, and usually it was more like 50-70 photographs. Hence I cannot blame Sony or the CD-RW disk. The problem was the careless retired professor who snapped too many pictures on one disk.

 

Below I make comparisons of some of the recovered photographs.

Recovered File 11

Recovered File 13


Recovered File 40

Recovered File 41

Recovered File 42

 

Recovered File 296

Recovered File 295

I obtained no good picture to compare with the above Recovered Files 295 and 296

 

Recovered File 377

Recovered File 379

Recovered File 380

 

Recovered File 462

Recovered File 463

 

Recovered File 473

Recovered File 474

 

Recovered File 537

Recovered File 540

Recovered File 535

 

 

In conclusion, I recommend Isobuster for recovering lost files, although I really don't know of any other software to compare it with for recovering lost CD files. The price is right since I recovered good copies of 231 pictures using the free version of Isobuster. But don't expect 100% recovery. And don't expect fast recovery. Recovering those 231 pictures took three days of continuous computing on my old Dell XP-system laptop.

The program is not user friendly. Don't contact me for help because I'm mostly confused by this program. However, help support by email was quick when I did ask one question during the recovery process. My helper seemed surprised that it was taking me so long and was not optimistic that it was going to work in my case. Fortunately, it did work for me.