Topic: SD 702 duplicate file names?:

[K.C.]

The last 2 shows I've recorded, the 702 wrote two separate files for the 1st sets for no reason. For instance, the file name shows T57.wav & another file named T57A.wav, all for one set of music. The only thing I found about this in the manual had to do with duplicate file names, but this sounded more like a file split & I was actually missing a small portion of music. Can someone please shed some light on this

[su6oxone]

Some more details about the files would be helpful, like the file size, what part of the first file is missing, etc. 

[K.C.]

Some more details about the files would be helpful, like the file size, what part of the first file is missing, etc.

they both seemed to be in random spots & i'm not sure how much was missing. the first time it happened within the first few minutes of the set, and the second time was at the end of the set. each set was about an hour long, running at 24/48. i have been running the 702 with the same settings since December of last year, and recorded 20 or so shows without incident. what gets me is both times it happened, then second sets were fine. i've never seen it create a second file with the "A" appended to the file name. my first thought was it did a file split automatically somehow, or my deck got bumped, but not sure since i've never used the file split features on 702. it's set for a 4GB auto split anyway...

[su6oxone]

Hmm, that does sound rather peculiar.  Unfortunately I don't have any ideas, but I would suggest giving SD tech support a call and see if they have any thoughts.  They're usually pretty good about hearing problems over the phone, sometimes they'll even ask one of the engineers if they're available. 

[page]

From what I've read here, the A files are when something goes wrong (for example a media error) and it can't keep going in that file, so it tries to create a new one and keep going. As to why it did it in this case, I have no idea. It seems most people who have posted about this in the past have no idea since there isn't an error log or anything that is written. SD can give you more info about what else could cause the A files, but thats what I've seen here (as I havn't gotten any myself).

[notlance]

SD is very responsive to customer questions, so it's worth sending them an email or posting the question on their forum.

In my experience, "A" files are created when a media error occurs during recording.  The box opens a new file and attempts to continue recording.  Often this happens when the CF is slow or fragmented or almost full.  I've had it happen to me only once a long time ago when I was using a CF to SD card adaptor (which I would not recommend).  I did not loose any data due to the A file split, but it's not anything I'd want to happen too often.  Just one more reason to record using redundant media.

[K.C.]

thanks for all the input! i will see what SD tech support says... in the meantime, i might just start running the microtrack for redundancy...

[mmedley.]

Definitely a slow media problem when you get the "A" files. I would recommend getter a faster CF card and/or ALWAYS making sure the card is formatted before each outing. Simply deleting the files from the unit or via computer simply will not "fix" the problem and you will continue to have fragmenting problems and more "A" errors.