Topic: Homegrown WAVE header repair utility

[live2496]

Audiohack won't fix the framing. What I used to do was import as raw into Samplitude multiple times with a different starting offset each time.

So with a 24-bit file three bytes make up each sample. (2x for stereo for a total of 6 bytes.) I would import with a different starting offset (1 byte more) each time. One of those has to be the correct framing. You can easily tell by listening to each audio segment in the DAW. Delete the badly framed audio and only keep the good one. Then export it to a new file.

I am not sure what software is out there that can do this or something similar. Samplitude has a dialog that can do this. It's not a common problem with good hardware and drivers.

[billydee]

One other complication with this 64gb SD card, the three previous sets recorded that night were done at 16/48, whereas the Dirtwire zero byte file set was recorded at 24/48.

So I'm wondering if I should pull the 16/48 files (nine of them in total) off of the SD card and then create a new clone/disc image of the card to work with. Any thoughts on that?

[live2496]

Audiohack will not require all of the files in the folder to have the same attributes. You will deal with each one individually and the number of bits, channels, sampling rate are retained. 
Whatever you do though having a backup copy is always a good idea. In the case of the pigiron utility if I remember correctly it attempts to fix up the original file.

Gordon

EDIT: I need to publish a new link for this as I am no longer paying for web hosting of my domain. Probably need to post some helpful instructions too or a video.

This is a link to my dropbox. I hope you can get the executable from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z7s506nh0c32dqz/audiohck.zip?dl=0

One thing I forgot. The program was written back when I was using Borland C++ and it only supported filenames with 8 characters and a three character extension.
So... this presents a problem. What I would recommend is to copy your file into the same folder as the audiohack.exe program and then rename the file to the 8.3 format so that the program can open it.

Also the program always creates two output files. This was to handle cases when files greater than 2GB were recorded. So in every case the first 2gb are written to file number 1.
The remainder is written to file number 2.

[billydee]

Tried several things and still no recovery. Followed all the instructions and tried the fixwav fix and the Audiohack fix. Tried chkdsk /f and chkdsk /r. Tried the free versions of RescuePro Deluxe, Recuva, Klennet Recovery (which has replaced ZAR), and Data Rescue.

The AudioHack fix creates 2 files from one of the zero byte files, both are only 1k in size. Fixwav message attached below.

Importing the zero byte files into Audacity as raw data does nothing.

I did find that there's a 1.38GB file named FILE0000.CHK on the card. I made a copy and renamed it to .WAV and pulled it into Audacity as Raw Data and it's a combination of white noise and music. As advised I imported it with a different starting offset, 1 byte at a time up to 6 bytes. Still white noise and music, but at some of the starting offsets it loaded into Audacity much faster.

The fact there's a 1.38GB .CHK file seems promising, but is it? The message I got from trying fixwav on that looked promising (see attached).

One thing I have not yet done is remove the 7.78GB worth of good WAV files from the SD card. They're backed up elsewhere but I have hesitated to make any changes on the card itself.

Like I mentioned earlier, the right amount of space to accommodate the three zero byte files (if they were each about 1.3GB or so as I'd expect) is there on the card. So I'm not giving up but am at a loss as to what to try next.
I've also attached some screenshots of messages from trying some of this.

[live2496]

It would seem that there was some corruption of the file system.
There may be other utilities you could try. BadCopyPro was something that I have used. Also utilities like TestDisk and PhotoRec might turn up something useful.

[billydee]

It would seem that there was some corruption of the file system.
There may be other utilities you could try. BadCopyPro was something that I have used. Also utilities like TestDisk and PhotoRec might turn up something useful.

Thank you for all the suggestions, much appreciated.

[morst]

I did find that there's a 1.38GB file named FILE0000.CHK on the card. I made a copy and renamed it to .WAV and pulled it into Audacity as Raw Data and it's a combination of white noise and music. As advised I imported it with a different starting offset, 1 byte at a time up to 6 bytes. Still white noise and music, but at some of the starting offsets it loaded into Audacity much faster.

If the music sounds like it's at the proper sample rate and channel count, but is interrupted by noise, then I would figure you have imported the raw data at the correctly matching bit depth, sample rate, and "endianness."
If this feed is intermittent, then that's likely to be file corruption from the card or recovery process. At least you have snippets of evidence!?!

[billydee]

I did find that there's a 1.38GB file named FILE0000.CHK on the card. I made a copy and renamed it to .WAV and pulled it into Audacity as Raw Data and it's a combination of white noise and music. As advised I imported it with a different starting offset, 1 byte at a time up to 6 bytes. Still white noise and music, but at some of the starting offsets it loaded into Audacity much faster.

If the music sounds like it's at the proper sample rate and channel count, but is interrupted by noise, then I would figure you have imported the raw data at the correctly matching bit depth, sample rate, and "endianness."
If this feed is intermittent, then that's likely to be file corruption from the card or recovery process. At least you have snippets of evidence!?!

Yes, I guess "snippets" covers what's been recovered so far. I've sort of given up for now and won't use that SD card anymore until another solution surfaces.

[morst]

I found a good video that clarifies how to really get pc command chkdsk to function.


I didn't realize that you'll need to tell windows to show invisible files, show non-system files, and show all extensions...


https://youtu.be/lw5zBkoWAg8?t=152
This video covers how to do that, around 2.5 minutes in.


I did a recovery on the PC and when I put the thumbdrive in my mac, the files were hidden from the Finder (mac version of windows explorer) but visible when I listed their contents using the terminal app (command line for mac).
I could have copied them off from the PC but used rsync from the terminal to move the files to my main drive.

[live2496]

I got in touch with the author of BadCopyPro and got my licensing key.

I would try that if you feel ok about sending it.

Gordon

[billydee]

I got in touch with the author of BadCopyPro and got my licensing key.

I would try that if you feel ok about sending it.

Gordon

Gordon, are you referring to my 64gb SD card zero byte file issue documented a couple months back?
Bill

[live2496]

yes. PM me if you wish to discuss possibilities.