A lot of points you have raised, many of which I cannot answer!
As far as I know Roxio Easy CD is the formatting program but I have only ever used Nero (for burning) and Nero InCD (for formatting); perhaps a Roxio user will advise.
Why are your photos so large? They needn't be unless you want enormous detail for A4 printing purposes. I always limit my photos, whether from digicam or downloaded or scanned to anywhere between 50kb to 200kb which allows fast writing/reading and I don't print very often. I believe your very large images might put a strain on writing (burning) facilities, but I don't know. Any photo can be reduced in size with an imaging program; I use Arcsoft Photo Studio but you can play around with sizes (and have a slide show if you want) with the free Irfanview from www.irfanview.com
Going back to burning, the slower the write speed the more dependable the result; I have an old, slow, but extremely reliable CD writer which I use to burn at 2X or sometimes 4X. Obviously it takes longer but so what? As I said before I format disks (CD-RWs) with Nero InCD and you really can read, write, rename etc just like with a hard disk; if you delete something then it is gone but if you confine yourself to backups only then you have the chance to replace. You can add/delete folders/files as many times as you like, until the dreaded 'backup and reformat' message appears - which you ignore at your peril! I have found that it is best to insert and delete CD-RWs while the PC is on - I mean do not leave the disk in the drive when off. Incidentally, if you did decide to format you can eject a disk only by right-clicking the taskbar icon (showing red when empty, green when a disk is inserted), or from My Computer, drive letter, eject. Speed does not apply with a formatted disk as you are not 'burning', only 'copying'.
Sorry I can't advise on how to recover your images but I think you should look into reducing file size and burning speed if you want better reliability when burning data (which photos are, normally).
Just re-read your post: when 'burning' DATA I find with Nero Express (nice and easy) that single or multiple sessions are quite OK.
The main object of formatted disks is convenience.
I use an external hard disk (USB1) for main storage and formatted CD-RWs for the backup. Obviously using an internal hard disk is just as good, and even better for backups. As always don't keep everything on one disk, whatever its type.
If you have a series of photos that you want to preserve indefinitely then use 'burning' to a little used CD and look after it carefully - scratches will eventually shorten its life (and hard disks can suddenly fail!) so maybe have a carefully selected CD (or two or three) of little used permanent storage.
God luck in the future.
johnni
As far as I know Roxio Easy CD is the formatting program but I have only ever used Nero (for burning) and Nero InCD (for formatting); perhaps a Roxio user will advise.
Why are your photos so large? They needn't be unless you want enormous detail for A4 printing purposes. I always limit my photos, whether from digicam or downloaded or scanned to anywhere between 50kb to 200kb which allows fast writing/reading and I don't print very often. I believe your very large images might put a strain on writing (burning) facilities, but I don't know. Any photo can be reduced in size with an imaging program; I use Arcsoft Photo Studio but you can play around with sizes (and have a slide show if you want) with the free Irfanview from www.irfanview.com
Going back to burning, the slower the write speed the more dependable the result; I have an old, slow, but extremely reliable CD writer which I use to burn at 2X or sometimes 4X. Obviously it takes longer but so what? As I said before I format disks (CD-RWs) with Nero InCD and you really can read, write, rename etc just like with a hard disk; if you delete something then it is gone but if you confine yourself to backups only then you have the chance to replace. You can add/delete folders/files as many times as you like, until the dreaded 'backup and reformat' message appears - which you ignore at your peril! I have found that it is best to insert and delete CD-RWs while the PC is on - I mean do not leave the disk in the drive when off. Incidentally, if you did decide to format you can eject a disk only by right-clicking the taskbar icon (showing red when empty, green when a disk is inserted), or from My Computer, drive letter, eject. Speed does not apply with a formatted disk as you are not 'burning', only 'copying'.
Sorry I can't advise on how to recover your images but I think you should look into reducing file size and burning speed if you want better reliability when burning data (which photos are, normally).
Just re-read your post: when 'burning' DATA I find with Nero Express (nice and easy) that single or multiple sessions are quite OK.
The main object of formatted disks is convenience.
I use an external hard disk (USB1) for main storage and formatted CD-RWs for the backup. Obviously using an internal hard disk is just as good, and even better for backups. As always don't keep everything on one disk, whatever its type.
If you have a series of photos that you want to preserve indefinitely then use 'burning' to a little used CD and look after it carefully - scratches will eventually shorten its life (and hard disks can suddenly fail!) so maybe have a carefully selected CD (or two or three) of little used permanent storage.
God luck in the future.
johnni