Hi guys, occasional lurker, first time poster here...I was hoping someone here may have some experience of the following scenario and may have some advice:
I recently engineered a private function gig where the band requested a board recording as a memento. As I was using an Ls9 I plugged in a USB stick and set the recording going at the start of the gig.
Unfortunately at the end of the show I was keen to get the desk out of the way of drunken dancers and so quickly powered off the PA and desk- without stopping the recording. D'oh! The result of this is that the drive has a file on it which it reports as being about 4kb and unreadable.
I have tried some freeware mp3 recovery software but with no joy- I guess the problem is that the file was never completed in the first place. So the question is- does anyone know of any software or service that can rebuild a useable mp3 file in this kind of situation? I'm not overly hopeful but maybe it's worth a shot.
Thanks for taking the time to read this- any help would be gratefully received!
Mat

I suspect that it's gone.

I've had a similar experience. Taught me not to rush.

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www.exaviormusic.com
www.manninmusic.com Music Teacher, Isle of Man

Would generic disk recovery software work? The data is on the stick, it's just that the file allocation table hasn't been filled with the details of where it is. (I assume you haven't written anything to the stick since then - that's guaranteed to permanently overwrite your data)
It's been a while since I looked at such things but google might be your friend. I'm sure there'll be some shareware / freeware disc recovery software out there that can look at the disc for you. The last time I did such a thing was with a digital camera SD card but the principal is about the same.

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There's nothing we can't face... Except for bunnies

Previous post at PSW forum on the same theme. Someone suggested generic disk recovery tools there - no answer whether it worked though.

http://srforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/533151/0/#msg_533151

Hi guys- thanks for taking the time to respond!
Exavior- yes I suspect it's gone too, but no harm in checking! And you're right of course, doing things in a rush is usually bad news- unfortunately I think part of the problem in this scenario is that its so easy to set up a recording on the ls9, that it's easy to forget you've done it! Had I had a seperate bit of hardware I was recording to, I'm sure I wouldn't have forgotten so easily. Stupid of me.
Sheriton- maybe some sort of disc recovery software could work, I did try a couple of bits of software designed to make unreadable mp3's useable, but with no success. I will look further into this although I'm not overly hopeful to be honest. I suspect in theory, as the data was written to the stick, it is recoverable, but without ever having had header data written, I imagine it might be a task for specialists that I can't afford! I will keep looking/ trying tho!
Grab- thanks for posting the PSW link- I had come across that thread whilst searching on this subject, and as you say, no-one's actually come forward to say that they've had any success, which doesn't bode well.
Thanks again to all for responses, I have any luck with this I'll post again to let you know.

Mat

Hi all

I just had a similar problem: A recording showed as only 20 KB or so because the USB stick was removed from the LS9 without stopping the recording. I finally managed to recover the recording using the following steps:

1. Take a raw image of the memory stick. I did this using the dd command on linux, but it can also be done using some backup software or imaging tools. The resulting image must have the same size as the Memory Stick.

2. Optional: If the resulting image is very big (for me it was 4 GB) you might want to truncate the file. My stick was empty when I started the recording and the recording was only about 30 minutes. Therefore I cut off 3.5 GB of the file using the split command in Linux.

3. I used UltraEdit (you can use and editor that can handle huge files) to find my MP3 data in the file. I found the beginning of my data by searching for the ASCII string "YAMAHA". Then I deleted everything before that header and saved the resulting file as test.mp3. (Note that you will also find the YPE folder and the SONG001.MP3 file name in the editor. However, the actual mp3 data might be somewhere else in the file.)

4. I was able to open the resulting mp3 file using Adobe Audition and cut it to the actual recording. This should work using any audio editing software.

Good luck!

Greets
Stefan

''Unfortunately at the end of the show I was keen to get the desk out of the way of drunken dancers and so quickly powered off the PA and desk- without stopping the recording''

This sort of happened to us but it was the venue who pulled the power !!! 8hours of recording down the drain and the promoter was paying for the recording as well !!!

We found about 7sec of audio but that was it

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PA Hire Surrey
Lighting Hire Surrey

Quote Mat B:

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The result of this is that the drive has a file on it which it reports as being about 4kb and unreadable.

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Is that all there is on the drive?

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I'm All Ears.