DVD-R Erased?!? How the Hell?!

Hey everyone,

I've a got a little inquiry. How in hell can a DVD-R that I have been using for 5 months 'magically' erase? After using it on a laptop I just bought, it seems that all the data was erased. I remember seeing the message "Preparing your DVD to be used on another computer" that day, but cannot certify that it was with this DVD.

1) How would my DVD drive do this by itself?
2) Is there a way to retrieve my Data
3) What the **** is going on?!

Thanks for any support.

** I'm using a Drive that can read DVD-+R, and have actually tried the DVD in another computer. So this isn't a hardware issue.

Does the DVD acutally come up with 4.7GB free? or is it 0mb free? If its 0, then the disk is corrupted, and nothing is readable. Thus it would seem like a "empty" disk. If it does say 4.7GB free... U sure u didn't grab the wrong disk?

You really can't re-burn a DVD-R like DVD-RWs. You can definitely burn more data to it, but the existing burn marks are still there, making both burns unusable. The sessions are a feature of DVD-Rs, since DVD-Rs can't burn over the same area of the disc more than once, it sections them into sessions, allowing you to burn more or different stuff on to it. Technically the old data is still there and always will be (that is, unless you try to burn OVER it).

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