fuck...what the hell happened??

I don't knoooooow! D: D:

I was saving my files to the CD, and I made sure everything looked okay, made sure the files were copied ONTO the cd, then went and deleted my files from the comp, to clear up room. Been having problems with my comp lately, so next day I ran a few analysis things, cleared up registry errors, deleted temp files, cleared cookies, broswing history, ran a defrag. All that lovely stuff.

And then when I go to access my files on the CD..... and the comp says "Uh... to make this useable, you need to format it". I know what formatting means for files, so I already felt that sinking feeling, declined formatting it, then watched as the comp proceeded to tell me there WERE NO FILES on the CD D:

Hmm....maybe you should try formatting it? Unless...it's too late :I

I doubt this would work but...would a system restore help?

Although....I wonder...what if it DID write the files but didn't show up because you didn't format. Just a thought.

Actually, what it looks like now is that it might not have written the files onto the cd in the first place, and put them in a 'ready to be written' state? But I thought I HAD written it D; I even made sure they were there by accessing some of the files from the disk instead of from the hard drive. I don't understand ;_;

I'm willing to bet it's user error, but that doesn't make things feel any better.

What type of cd is it? I don't think it matters, but I want to rule it out

DVD-R. we (fam) were told to use DVD-Rs because they have more space on them. I'm finding some conflicting data though on which DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW is correct. Comp didn't object :/