Data recovery help request - with a slight twist

[mitaux8030]

I have a Win98 PC that is recording audio constantly in mp3 format, using a custom application to remove gaps of silence in the audio. It's a bit like a voice activated tape recorder on PC.
Anyway, the PC crashed the other day, and lost about 48 hours of audio in a file that was in the process of recording. The recorded & processed audio gets written 'live' to the file, and then once recording is manually stopped the file is closed and available to post-process. I'm hoping the majority of the audio is still there somewhere on the HDD - just the file is corrupt & showing 0 bytes length.

Are there any data recovery like programs that can help in this slightly unique situation?

[tristen]

There a few Windows applications which will do what you require.

A very good one is GetDataBack. There are two versions, one for FAT and one for NTFS file systems. See .

It's possibly available from other locations also. Use Google.

There are several things to observe when attempting to recover lost data...

1/. Don't install the recovery software on the drive on which your lost data, i.e your audio data, is stored as you risk overwriting it.

2/. Don't attempt to recover data TO the drive on which your lost data is/was stored for the same reason.

Windows 98 uses FAT(32) so GetDatBack for FAT is the version to use in this instance.

[weirdo]

0 bytes filesize doesn't sound too hopeful to me

[jwoegerbauer]

Times ago I have noticed "0 bytes in length" with MP3s that I bought and downloaded from Amazon. Most report 0 bytes in length even though WMP 12 played them happily.

EDIT:

Problems with audio files often can be fixed with the free audio editor called Audacity. Audacity is a small and efficient program, so it’s handy to keep around even if it’s not your primary audio editing tool.

Trying to import the corrupt file into Audacity as an audio file crashed the program, but there’s another option: to import as Raw Data. (File>>Import>>Raw Data…) It’s important to know something about the file when importing as Raw Data. You will be presented with an import dialog asking for the sample rate, the number of channels (one for mono, two for stereo, more for interleaved multitrack files), the kind of encoding (in this case, 16-bit PCM). It will also ask for an oddly-named parameter called "Little-Endian" or "Big-Endian." The disk formats that most current field recorders use, FAT 16 or FAT 32, write WAV files with accompanying metadata at the end, known as "Little Endian."

Audacity Import Raw -> There are a few other settings, but it’s usually best to try the defaults first and see what happens. In this case, it worked fine with the default settings, but if the file did not import correctly, it’s worth trying some variations in the start offset value. If the file opened, but was full of static and other noise, try again with the "Start Offset" set to 1 sample. Once the file is successfully imported, you will have to Export it as a standard WAV file in order to re-write the correct header data. Don’t just hit SAVE in Audacity, that will merely save your session information, you must Export to make a new file.

[mitaux8030]

Thanks guys, I'll add GetDataBack to the quiver. And thanks for the tip about Audacity, will see if it can import & play the file, I've got that on the PC here somewhere.
The application that records these files writes audio as it goes over time, and only 'closes' the file when you manually stop recording. So the data is going to be there, it's just a matter of finding and extracting it.

The other problem is these programs won't run on a W98 system; so I've removed the HDD and plan to add it to a newer PC as a secondary HDD and process it that way. But that in itself has a problem: no IDE ports on these newer PCs. Wonder if those IDE>USB converters have enough 'compatibility' to permit the recovery software to do their thing?

[mtv]

I've used IDE-USB docking stations to recover data from drives using GetDataBack (Both FAT & NTFS).

[mitaux8030]

Thanks for all your advice guys. I've recovered the vital lost file... with 'Pandora Recovery' deep scan, looking specifically for mp3 files. GetDataBack didn't find it, even with the advanced options in play.