Disaster with SS 3.1, now need data recovery help (I hope) !

[Hulamau]

I have an urgent problem I am hoping someone can help me with.

I tried to upload a HIMD 1 GB disc recorded at 256K Atrac 3-Plus on a RH-10 ( a US model) The recording was done in England and sent to me for uploading and subsequent editing for resale.

It had 3 hours of highly important talks by a teacher in London and this was a special one time event.

I had never had problems with SS 2.3 thru 3.1 previously and when the HiMD disc arrived, I naturally put it in my MZ-NH900 HiMD player, connected the USB cable and taped the AC power cord to make sure it didnt come loose and generally took the same level of precaution as I would to launch the space shuttle.

I then retitled all the tracks, and each track was about 60 to 80 mintues long and there were 3 tracks on the disc.

After labeling all the tracks prior to upload, I selected to not delete the tracks from the HiMD player post upload and also selected to convert to WAV for editing after upload, I then clicked the orange transfer button as usual.

There was a brief delay of a second or two tops and then an error mesage appeared in SS and a corresponding one on the display of the MZ-NH900 saying:

"Format Error Disc" .

It did transfer my new folder name for the files that I had written just prior to pushing the transfer button, to SS 'My Library' on the left hand pane, but the folder has zero bytes in it and, just my luck, I can no longer access the disc at all!

To my gut wrentching dismay that was it and I felt as if I been turned into a pillar of salt at Sodom and Gomorrah! I couldn't do a darn thing with it after clicking around SS and had to turn it off and unplug the USB cable. Again, I can no longer access the disc as I get the same "Format Error Disc" message whenever I try to play it.

The disc played perfectly prior to starting the upload so I know it was good to go beforehand.

The error mesage came up so quickly there was not enough time, by any means, to have actually formatted the disc, and I'm sure it must have just scrambled the preamble or table of contents or whatever SS does to randomly ruin discs like this.

This was a personal recording from a microphone on the mic imputs and NOT copy protected.

My question now is, does anyone know of ANY data recovery service that I could pay to have the audio data rescued from this single HiMD disc?

Unfortunately, I was unaware of version 3.2 before trying this upload three weeks ago and had just upgraded to 3.1 in late July.

Does SS 3.2 promise to prevent these kind of random diasters?

I am desparate to recover at least the first two hours of this audio, if at all possible.

Finally, does anyone know what department at Sony I might contact, or any other outside data service that could help? Sony is bound to have a way to reverse their own copy protection system, even when it goes haywire like this (I pray).

Many thanks for any assitance and information, I much appreciate it.

Aloha, Hulamau.

Edited October 2, 2005 by Hulamau

[ynos]

Does SS 3.2 promise to prevent these kind of random diasters?

I'm sorry about your case, I had the same problem using ss3.0 a day after I bought my rh910. I upgraded to ss3.2 and until now so far no problem.

[A440]

The problem may have been in the retitling--better to upload first--but that is no excuse for what happened. And yes, 3.2 is more reliable. As a first step, you should install 3.2 and see if it can somehow read the disc via USB. You never know.

Otherwise, you are going to have to hammer Sony to get them to help you with this. Call their customer service and explain the problem to them and make clear how important the audio was and how much you will be financially damaged if the data cannot be recovered. The first level or two of service operators will simply give you "Sorry for the inconvenience" and try to brush you off. Demand a supervisor, demand that they escalate (use that word) the question to a higher level of technical support, and be extremely persistent. Somewhere in the organization is someone who can find your data.

You could threaten to sue them under consumer protection laws. Most states have what is called a "warrant of merchantibility" which means that when they sell you something it's supposed to work as advertised. Your RH10 is a new, top-of-the-line model that is supposed to do exactly what you set it to do.

Incidentally, you don't have to worry about AC. The USB connection powers the unit. I found this out when I hooked up my NH600, uploaded, disconnected, tried to play back and found no battery in the unit.

[Hulamau]

Many thanks YNOS and A440

It really is a travesty that they can dump this lousy software on us! I've contacted their US head of marketimng to see if I can find the right person at Sony engineering /support to sendthis disc to for recovery and see what happens.

When I try to just play the disc in my regular HiMD MZ-NH900 I get the "Format Error Disc" message but I will try to uplaod it ocne again but useing 3.2 this time. Any other disc and it would have just moderately ticked me off, but this was a truly special 'one of a kind' session that hundreds of people were counting on hearing.

I just dont have the time to make 'real-time' analog backups of every disc I get in for uploading and editing but I sure wish I had done so with this one.

Are we sure now that 3.2 shouldnt cause this problem any longer?

And can I retitle the separate tracks on a HiMD disc after I upload them adn convert to WAV as aparto the upload process via SS 3.2, rather than retitling them before uploading? I suppose I should still check the Rename Music files option in any event?

I also selected 256K as the fall back default format (which is what it was recorded at) and I selected NOT to delete the files from the player and to convert to WAV in the advanced options.

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing if you have any luck with your contacts I'll let you know if I have any as well.

Edited October 2, 2005 by Hulamau

[Hulamau]

A440,

I did what you suggested and tried to upload the damged disc again but this time using SS 3.2 and to my surprise SS 3.2 this time did show the correct tracks and time lengths and even the right track titles I had added just before the aborted upload attempt using SS 3.1.

However, just when I was all fired up to finally be able to recover this audio and I clicked the transfer button after only a second the transfer progress bar at the top move all the way across to full and an error messge popped up in SS 3.2 along with a chime tone saying "Internall error for "London Aug 6th Disc 1 of 2 and "London Aug 6th disc 2 of 2" which is what I had named the two 80 minute audio tracks on the disc. Acurtally there were three other tracks at teh beginnig nof the disc but each were just 10 to 15 second long tracks that the person who made the recording in England had inserted when doing mic testing prior to recording the two tracks with the actual talks.

After this second aborted upload the same "Format Error Disc" memo shows up in the display of the MZ-NH900 again as it did before with SS 3.1 , but if I pop the disc out and put it back in and restart SS3.2 it will again reset SS 3.2 to read the correct track titles and time lengths of each track again, so I know the audio data itself is intact!

There has GOT to be some data recovery service that could figure this out and recover that data for me. This is maddening!

Any more suggestions based on what I've reproted above now with SS 3.2 giving me this tantalizing glimpse, but no cigar?

Many thanks again,

Hulamau

Edited October 3, 2005 by Hulamau

[The Low Volta]

when you connect to 3.2 and the titles show correctly, can you play the audio through Sonicstage? (press play in sonicstage with the tracks still in the right column) if so, you should get TotalRecorder ($11 on the net) and record the tracks digitally in realtime as described here under dex's options for paranoid users

[Hulamau]

when you connect to 3.2 and the titles show correctly, can you play the audio through Sonicstage? (press play in sonicstage with the tracks still in the right column) if so, you should get TotalRecorder ($11 on the net) and record the tracks digitally in realtime as described here under dex's options for paranoid users

Hi All,

It was strange, it would give me the 'Format Error Disc' message after showing me the titles and I tried to upload digitally unsuccessfully again, and then not be accessable, and if I took the disc out and put it back in three times somehow it would randomly load up properly and when I saw that the error message was no longer showing on the display of the MZ-NH900. I immediately set up my Xitel Inport USB A/D recorder and 'Lo and behold' recovered the entire recording via my Goldwave editing software!!!

Ureka! Its now all saved as two long wav files and sounds great!

I still couldnt do a digital upload but at least I was able to get the audio off the disc. When I tried to play it back again via the Hi-MD player, it reverted back to the 'Format Error Disc' message but at least I can sleep well tonight!

Many thanks for the help folks!

Hulamau