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Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: DMBprez on March 27, 2010, 10:07:39 AM
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Hi,
I am trying to pull a file off of my iRiver, but it will get to a certain point every time, stop, and freeze my computer up.
Any ideas? :(
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When this happened to me a few times it was a sign of a bad sector on the iRiver disc (although I normally got it reported as a cyclic redundancy error eventually). Run Chkdsk and if it shows up any bad sectors that's could be what's causing the freezing. All is not lost if that is the case, as you can run Chkdsk to repair the bad sector (can remember the exact command /R or /F?). You may find it results in you losing a small fraction of the file if this is the cause.
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You do need to do chkdsk like he said, but I would hold off for a moment. chkdsk will attempt to repair the file system, even if it has to destroy your file to do it, so I might try a couple of gentler options first.
Mount it up on a Linux computer if you (or a buddy) have one, and try to copy it off onto the linux computer. I have saved a lot of data from funky drives using Linux. It won't recover a bad sector automatically, but it might just read the whole file, including the bad spot, without freaking out like Windows tends to.
If the recording is an important one, I would try to do a transfer by patching the output of the iRiver into something else and playing it back (digi to another iRiver is ideal, but even analog into your computer's sound card line it is better than nothing).
Then run chkdsk like he said. I generally run "chkdsk /f x:" for "fix" first, try to recover the file, and then run "chkdsk /r x:" for "recover" second.
Good luck.
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^
Good suggestions - thanks. I hadn't thought of trying another operating system or the digi out to digi in on another iRiver (I've got 2 H120s so this would be an option for me). If it happens again to me I'll try these first rather than diving in with repairing the sector, which has lost me a small bit of my recording each time its happened to me!
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Try this too http://www.jfilerecovery.com/
It will copy the file for you, and when it comes across the bad part of the file, it will skip it, but will continue copying the file. At most, you would hear a small skip during the damaged part.
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This was the error I got at first:
can't read from the source file or disk.
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You do need to do chkdsk like he said, but I would hold off for a moment. chkdsk will attempt to repair the file system, even if it has to destroy your file to do it, so I might try a couple of gentler options first.
Mount it up on a Linux computer if you (or a buddy) have one, and try to copy it off onto the linux computer. I have saved a lot of data from funky drives using Linux. It won't recover a bad sector automatically, but it might just read the whole file, including the bad spot, without freaking out like Windows tends to.
If the recording is an important one, I would try to do a transfer by patching the output of the iRiver into something else and playing it back (digi to another iRiver is ideal, but even analog into your computer's sound card line it is better than nothing).
Then run chkdsk like he said. I generally run "chkdsk /f x:" for "fix" first, try to recover the file, and then run "chkdsk /r x:" for "recover" second.
Good luck.
How would i go about doing this? What would I need?
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Just thought of something, should I be doing this differently other than going into my computer and clicking and dragging the recording to my desktop?
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Just thought of something, should I be doing this differently other than going into my computer and clicking and dragging the recording to my desktop?
I don't think it matters how you do it, if it can't read the drive, it can't.
You also asked...
How would i go about doing this? What would I need?
Basically you just patch it like you were dubbing from one deck to another. It's real time... if it's a 2 hour wave file, it will take 2 hours. Run a 1/8" to 1/8" stereo cable from the iRiver output to the input jack on the sound card (most sound cards have one anyway), and then pull up audacity or whatever and have it record while you play the iRiver. The idea is maybe the iRiver will still play the file (perhaps with a little skip) so that you can get a copy of the tape. Then you run chkdsk.
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Just thought of something, should I be doing this differently other than going into my computer and clicking and dragging the recording to my desktop?
I don't think it matters how you do it, if it can't read the drive, it can't.
You also asked...
How would i go about doing this? What would I need?
Basically you just patch it like you were dubbing from one deck to another. It's real time... if it's a 2 hour wave file, it will take 2 hours. Run a 1/8" to 1/8" stereo cable from the iRiver output to the input jack on the sound card (most sound cards have one anyway), and then pull up audacity or whatever and have it record while you play the iRiver. The idea is maybe the iRiver will still play the file (perhaps with a little skip) so that you can get a copy of the tape. Then you run chkdsk.
Can I use the microphone jack in my computer? Do you know?
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Just thought of something, should I be doing this differently other than going into my computer and clicking and dragging the recording to my desktop?
I don't think it matters how you do it, if it can't read the drive, it can't.
You also asked...
How would i go about doing this? What would I need?
Basically you just patch it like you were dubbing from one deck to another. It's real time... if it's a 2 hour wave file, it will take 2 hours. Run a 1/8" to 1/8" stereo cable from the iRiver output to the input jack on the sound card (most sound cards have one anyway), and then pull up audacity or whatever and have it record while you play the iRiver. The idea is maybe the iRiver will still play the file (perhaps with a little skip) so that you can get a copy of the tape. Then you run chkdsk.
Can I use the microphone jack in my computer? Do you know?
no. microphone level <> line level
I would try all of the other options mentioned multiple times before I resorted to this anyway though.
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I tried the analog to analog thing cause nothing else worked. It recorded all the way up to a point and the tape cuts off.
Except when I open the tape in Foobar (from the player), it has the full tape there.
Any other ideas?
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If you can do a "save as" in Foobar save it to your hard drive (I don't know anything about foobar), otherwise I think it's time to run chkdsk.
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Try this too http://www.jfilerecovery.com/
It will copy the file for you, and when it comes across the bad part of the file, it will skip it, but will continue copying the file. At most, you would hear a small skip during the damaged part.
Did you try this? It worked for me with a similar iriver problem.
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Try this too http://www.jfilerecovery.com/
It will copy the file for you, and when it comes across the bad part of the file, it will skip it, but will continue copying the file. At most, you would hear a small skip during the damaged part.
Did you try this? It worked for me with a similar iriver problem.
All I can get this program to do is run a scan on my system. It doesn't give me an option to open an individual file. Any incite?
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Try this too http://www.jfilerecovery.com/
It will copy the file for you, and when it comes across the bad part of the file, it will skip it, but will continue copying the file. At most, you would hear a small skip during the damaged part.
Did you try this? It worked for me with a similar iriver problem.
All I can get this program to do is run a scan on my system. It doesn't give me an option to open an individual file. Any incite?
Ah, you might have clicked on the advertisement on the page. Try this direct link:
http://www.jfilerecovery.com/JFileRecovery.jnlp
When it launches, you select the source file, and the destination.
(http://i43.tinypic.com/2ezmcu8.jpg)
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Yeah, that program keeps freezing up when it gets to that error. :-\
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There are several easy things I would suggest.
Maybe you used Jfilerecovery for this already, but there are definitely other programs that will copy & save the file up to the point with the error, where it will then probably stall, but you'll have a good portion of the file sitting on your hard drive without it disappearing like it would from a Windows file-copy. You can then just cancel or exit out of the transfer once it stalls and the copied portion will stay in tact.
Then you at least have a lossless digital copy of the first half of the file, which is one step that's covered if you can't retrieve the rest of it.
The next thing I would do is try playing the file on the iRiver itself first, and see what happens when it gets to that point. Then I would also see if the iRiver allows skipping around the file, and maybe you could skip past the error and be able to play the file from after the error point until the end. Then you could at least get an analog copy of most of the 2nd half of the show.
If that didn't work, I would hook up the iRiver to the PC via USB etc, and try playing the file within Windows via your usual software... Media Player Classic, VLC, Winamp etc, and see what happens. It will probably stop or error-out when it gets to the problem spot, but those programs can usually let you skip past the error if you're careful enough to skip completely past it, and then you'll still be able to play the rest of the show. Then you could do a real-time recording within Windows of the remaining set and you might only lose 1-2 songs (or less) due to the error.
Then I would attempt other options of fixing the overall problems. My first priority would be to secure as much of the recording as possible first and/or make sufficient copies before you attempt something that could possibly change/damage that area of the HDD further. That's what I would do first, no question.
Lastly, when that's done you may also want to bring your iRiver to a friend's house with a Mac or Linux system. Someone talked about Linux already, but even Mac's seem to work differently when copying corrupted files. They won't error-out, it will just copy the file even if some portions are damaged. If the entire file was damaged (which we know it's not), then the copied file might just be a garbled mess, but in the case of one error spot, the beginning should be completely fine and maybe all the portions after the error would be fine too. Do that and then skip around the file to see if there's just a slight skip during the part with the error. One problem is you don't know yet how big the error portion is, but all of these things will help answer that.
I've had experience doing all of these things to various extents to help recover files, so I hope it helps.
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I tried the analog to analog thing cause nothing else worked. It recorded all the way up to a point and the tape cuts off.
Except when I open the tape in Foobar (from the player), it has the full tape there.
Any other ideas?
you can't play it back all the way through from your iriver, right?