Weird Data Recovery Issue: Optical Media

I'm trying to recover data from some old backup DVD's I made in Windows circa about 2003. These are full of family photos which I'd ideally like to get back, as the originals are tied up in a divorce feud with my parentals.

The weird issue is that on a few of these DVD's, my computer either doesn't recognize there's anything in the drive (though I can hear it whirring) forcing me to use the terminal or to reboot to eject them, or it will INSIST that they are blank DVD's. I've tried checking these discs out in Amiga 4, Windows 7, and Kali Linux 6 as well, and have similar results. I know I made these discs, and I can physically see how much data was burned on to these. They are CD-R and DVD-R formats (I found two different sets of backups in my old things, though the CD's are much older). While some of them are fairly scratched, I've had less issues with audio CD's from significantly longer ago.

Normally if a piece of media showed a blank file system, I would use something like Photorec to look for lost partitions, but I can't find anything that will scan "blank cd's" for lost partitions.

Any ideas? I really don't care which OS the solution's on. I run 4 in Cohearence with Paralells.