Topic: restoring a lost file?

[stirinthesauce]

I'm probably SOL but I will ask anyways since I was the only taper.  Last night I go to tape PGroove.  Plan on doing a matrix, board into my deck, mics into lappy, and mix in post.  Hasn't been an issue but Soundguy for the band (Dan) was a bit hesitant since they are in the works of releasing a live album.  Said he was cool with a matrix just didn't want a board by itself to circulate.  Say cool, no problem.  Night goes by flawlessly(great show) until right as second set ended, my computer goes blank.  I freak, trying to boot it up in time for the encore.  Wasn't going to work, so yanked the board patch out of my deck, grabbed my 7pin and plugged into my ua-5 and got it rolling right as the band was walking back out for the encore.  Somehow I must have bumped my power chord going into the back of my lappy and I was running on battery power and it just died.  I check my file size for set 2 and it says on 57mb.  First set was 638mb.  So I guess my question is this:

Is there a way I can retrieve this file since it was writing to the hard drive or is this wishful thinking and I botched the whole 2nd set?

What sucks is I have the board but can't circulate it so if I'm screwed I guess I will just circulate the 1st set matrix and that's all to be had.  Damn, had a patcher there to but he forgot how to work his pro tools on his lappy 

Any help to be offered folks?

TIAA, -Jon

[firmdragon]

i've only tried this on an iriver, but the situation was similar, and the iriver is harddrive based...

try "chkdsk /f" the hd.

if it works, it'll ask you if you want to recover the lost chain (y/n)? press Y.  i don't want you to overwrite any needed data, or anything, so you may want to wait until someone else comes by w/ more knowledgable ideas. i'm certainly no expert.

[stirinthesauce]

Thanks for the ray of hope    Your thought process seems logical and I was thinking along the same lines but just don't have the technical know how to do.  I'll wait for some other responses before I do anything.

If I can restore this, I will have the complete show as this happened like 15 seconds after the close of the second set    Guess I need to cross my fingers.

[stirinthesauce]

Alright, still need some help.  For some reason now the file is showing up when I drag my pointer over the folder it is showing 786mb of data.  When I try to open it with wavelab4, it shows no waveform, just a flat line.  In the open box, it shows properies of 16bit/44.1khz sample rate.  Length 0/0     That's what confuses me.  The data is in there but I can't retrieve it.  Any thoughts on how to remedy this problem?

[live2496]

Alright, still need some help.  For some reason now the file is showing up when I drag my pointer over the folder it is showing 786mb of data.  When I try to open it with wavelab4, it shows no waveform, just a flat line.  In the open box, it shows properies of 16bit/44.1khz sample rate.  Length 0/0     That's what confuses me.  The data is in there but I can't retrieve it.  Any thoughts on how to remedy this problem?

The riff header was not updated when the file was closed.

You can use an audio editor like Audition and "import as raw", or use my audiohack.exe utility to write out a new file with a corrected riff header.
http://www.gidluckmastering.com/audiohck.zip . Instructions are around here somewhere.

Gordon

[stirinthesauce]

Woooohooooo!  Thanks Gordon.  +t!  I opened in soundforge6, also used the terminology from your reply and found this thread in a search, http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=5708.0, which was basically what you said.  Everything worked out, have the whole show.  Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!
-Jon

[live2496]

Glad I could help.

[Gordon]

who is this other gordon?? 

[BobW]

A really nice guy who knows allot about PDA recording software, and audio recording in general.

He's bailed me out at least a few times.

I'm glad to see him on the board !