Sam Cousins Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Hi Folks, I've managed to clone the hard drive from my Fostex PD6 which recently lost its primary means of file transfer, the DVDRAM drive. Unfortunately, instead of recovering PolyWavs I've been left with recovered files whose sizes and apparent timecodes (between start and finish) match the original files, but are unreadable as audio as the necessary header information is missing. Does anybody know of any software or techniques able to repair the necessary information or UK-based specialists in this field? The drive contains the first week's rushes from a feature I'm working on at the moment. Thanks in advance for your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olle Sjostrom Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Same thing happened to me but on an sd card.. I googled wav file header repair and found millions of answers. They didn't help me much though... The other way around is to open the sounds as raw files in an editor like audacity. I don't know if timecode or any metadata will follow though.. None of that helped me, so then I tried recovering the files with another software called photo rescue or something.. It recovered and repaired the headers. Worked perfectly and nothing was broken. However this was on a pc.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Cousins Posted June 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Same thing happened to me but on an sd card.. I googled wav file header repair and found millions of answers. They didn't help me much though... The other way around is to open the sounds as raw files in an editor like audacity. I don't know if timecode or any metadata will follow though.. None of that helped me, so then I tried recovering the files with another software called photo rescue or something.. It recovered and repaired the headers. Worked perfectly and nothing was broken. However this was on a pc.. Thanks Olle, I tried the audacity thing as well. Would the software you mentioned be Wondershare Photo Recovery by any chance? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cory Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 I've had a lot of luck with Sound Forge (available on both Mac and PC) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olle Sjostrom Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Photorec was the name! http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec It took a while to run, but it worked perfectly. And I tried using a lot of other software a, like recuva... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Smith Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Sam: How did you copy the files from the PD6 drive? If you recorded the fles as BWF, the BEXT chunk headers should have been kept intact. Are you using a Mac or PC? --S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Cousins Posted June 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 Hi Scott, I've tried both PC and Mac. To begin with only the first partition would show up on the Mac and nothing on the PC. After some investigation, I used Isobuster to recover the files I couldn't see. This was on the PC. The first partition's files were fine because I could copy them directly from the HD. The rest of the files however, had to be extracted. In the process they have lost their header information. The files were all recorded as BWFs, some two track poly, some four. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Smith Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 I haven't used Isobuster, so I can't comment on how it works. It may simply look at the files as generic WAV files, and re-write the header accordingly without the BEXT chunk. Did you extract and re-write to the same drive, or extract it to a second one? If on the same drive, it may have already re-written the file header data, in which case you may be screwed Is there any kind of "undo" function? It sounds like the original problem could be due to a corrupted boot sector the drive partition. If you still have the original drive intact, you might be able to use a drive partition tool like Partition Wizard to fix the damaged boot sector, which would then allow you to copy the files directly (as opposed to extracting them). On the other hand, you could screw it up even worse! If you can, I would try making a copy of the drive using DOS level commands first, which may allow you to access the original partition. If Courtney is lurking, he may have some insight on this as well, as he truly understands the relationship of the BEXT header data within the file structure. His BWF widget tool will also allow you to look at the embedded BWF chunk in the file header. BTW: There is a pretty good (but somewhat dated) reference for the PD6 on the 695 website at: http://www.695.com/Fostex_Survival_Guide.pdf --S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Orusa Posted June 4, 2013 Report Share Posted June 4, 2013 I dunno if they will help you in your particular situation, but there are some great software tools at http://www.prosofteng.com (Mac OS). Drive Genius and Data Rescue have saved my butt a number of times. Mark O. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted June 8, 2013 Report Share Posted June 8, 2013 Some info at these links on how to fix corrupt WAV files: http://www.ehow.com/how_6023302_repair-corrupt-_wav-file.html http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThatSinkingFeelingAndRepairingACorruptWAVFile.aspx http://www.sweetwater.com/forums/showthread.php?45876-Corrupt-wav-file-repair-help As much as I'm a Mac guy, I've also used Sound Forge under Windows to repair corrupted WAV files where the headers were damaged and some of the data was garbled. Be warned that you may lose timecode with some of these editors. As long as there's a slate clap, they can always sync them manually, and it would "theoretically" be possible to manually put the timecode back with Wave Agent. Courtney Goodin's excellent utility BWF-Widget Pro may also help: http://www.bwfwidget.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering Ear Posted June 8, 2013 Report Share Posted June 8, 2013 You can also try SoundHack, which will allow you to modify the BWAV header info. I would first try another drive rescue program like data rescue to see if it will properly identify the files off the original disk. That would save you a lot of time and headache trying to recreate the header info from scratch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted June 9, 2013 Report Share Posted June 9, 2013 SoundHack was the one I couldn't think of! Thanks, Kelsey. http://www.soundhack.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering Ear Posted June 10, 2013 Report Share Posted June 10, 2013 SoundHack was the one I couldn't think of! Thanks, Kelsey. http://www.soundhack.com/ Its always good to have many tools at your disposal, especially when fixing these kinds of issues. Lets just hope the OP doesn't have to open a hex editor to fix his problem. Every time I open a hex editor, I'm in deep shit. Fortunately is a very rare occurrence. Kelsey http://wanderingear.net Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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