Topic: Jukebox 3 (JB3) - How to recover a missing (possibly unsaved) recording?

[Senza]

I tried a search on the topic but couldn't find anything.

Basically, the other night i recorded a concert and i'm sure I saved it (i remember trying to unlock it - the power button was a bit sticky) but i was in a hurry to get out of the venue to get my coach home and i might have left it on. Contrary to the JB3 FAQ, my player doesn't seem to save recordings before turning off if the battery is run down. This is the only thing i can imagine happening - that i put the JB3 in my bag before saving the recording.

My question - is there a temporary folder on the hard drive that i can recover the show from? Or could it be there and the UI just isn't reporting it/wasn't properly indexed? I don't mind taking out the hard drive and mounting it in my computer (as i really need to replace the JB3 anyway and because this show is so important). It was definitely recording during the show, as i was checking the levels occasionally because i'd been having a problem with my mics. The firmware is 1.40.06p and there is 2.5 GB free on the drive (the show would've only been 1.4 GB or so due to it being 75 minutes long). The JB3 saved the support act recording i made no problems. I haven't written anything to it since and it hasn't defragmented itself.

Thanks for any help.

[sunjan]

Sorry to bring bad news, but mounting the HDD in you computer normally wouldn't help. The file system is custom to Creative, and not recognized as FAT32 or anything like that.

If it didn't save it didn't save.
To retrieve an unsaved WAV, you'd probably need to hand it in to one of those forensic companies that rescue data, and pay $$$$. 

[Senza]

Sorry to bring bad news, but mounting the HDD in you computer normally wouldn't help. The file system is custom to Creative, and not recognized as FAT32 or anything like that.

If it didn't save it didn't save.
To retrieve an unsaved WAV, you'd probably need to hand it in to one of those forensic companies that rescue data, and pay $$$$. 

Ah, that's disappointing. Searching for details about their filesystem, i've found this website: http://www.gruppo4.com/~tobia/zenrecover.shtml, where the guy has written some code to extract files from the filesystem. So i'll just need to figure out how the folder names translate to the JB3 specifically and the (far easier) issue of attaching an old 2.5" IDE drive onto my PC. And then of course how unsaved data will represent itself on the drive.. But it seems all is not lost at least!

Thanks for the info

[sunjan]

Searching for details about their filesystem, i've found this website: http://www.gruppo4.com/~tobia/zenrecover.shtml, where the guy has written some code to extract files from the filesystem.

Interesting, thanks for the link.

Iriver users have had some luck with this tool:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

I don't know whether it works with JB3, but you could give it a shot if you take out the HDD anyway.
Post your results here!

[OMA]

Well, I guess I'm more than two years late
but still, if someone finds this post in Google, and wants
to recover data from one of those Creative Jukebox 3 units
with those damned proprietary drivers (why didn't they use USB Mass Storage?)
and proprietary filesystem (why in the world didn't they use FAT32?),
the answer is here (the link posted above doesn't work anymore):

https://gist.github.com/816115

Some guy modified that script to recover data from a Nomad Jukebox and Zen Xtra hard disk,
be it deleted files or just regular files. So now it could recover deleted data!

Just download that Python script, edit it so it says ZENVISION=False (JB3 and Xtra need that)
and run it from a Linux Terminal like this:

sudo python zenrecover.py /dev/sdc destinationfolder

Substitute "sdc" with the last three letter word you see when listing this:

ls -l /dev/sd*

(the Nomad hard disk should usually be the last one when plugged to your computer)

You can use any Linux, even running it from a CD or pen drive (the latter is faster).
If you are uncertain how to do that, you can use the Ubuntu Windows installer:
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer
(it installs Ubuntu as if it were a Windows program)

I appreciate this might not be ultra-easy for everyone (specially those not familiar with Linux),
but that's just about the only possibility when you want to recover your data from that kind of device.

In my case I can't use the NJB3 anymore since it's not compatible with Win7 x64.
This device could be still working perfectly if it used more standard stuff such as
regular USB Mass Storage protocol and FAT32, but all that proprietary crap it uses makes it obsolete
for new operating systems. Pretty sad, since the hardware is great,
but the software stinks. Well, just about any Creative product suffers from this disease.