Hi-MD TOC Cloning

[raintheory]

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of TOC Cloning from the earlier (pre HiMD) days of MiniDisc. TOC cloning in those days enabled users to retrieve audio that had accidentally been erased, as well as increasing disc capacities. All by simply tricking a MiniDisc recorder into writing the TOC from a "source disc" (containing one long track the entire length of the disc, in whatever format the original disc was) onto the original, or "victim disc".

There have been many users over the years that have found ways with patricular units to accomplish TOC Cloning. These units were mainly Sony Decks and older Sharp portables. The basic concept is to eject the "source disc" without the unit knowing (after the TOC has been read into memory). And then inserting the "victim disc" and having the unit write the TOC by either titling a track, adding a track-mark etc. Personally I chose to try this out a few months ago with an MDLP Sony Prtable (R700). I had seen no indication of anyone attempting this before so I downloaded the service manual and experimented. To my surprise I ended up with a Sony portable that could clone TOC's.

Since the advent of Hi-MD I do not recall the topic being brought up at any point. Though I have seen numerous topics about erased Hi-MD discs (particularly with older SonicStage versions) and lost Hi-MD recordings. So with the RH1 on it's way to my mailbox I decided to give it a go. This time with my NH900 Hi-MD recorder.

After sucessfully modifying the unit and testing. There is some bad news. Although I can sucessfully clone one Hi-MD TOC to another, each time immediately after wrtiing the system file the unit will first display "Rec Error". And then "Cannot Record or Play". When plugging the unit into SonicStage, it does one of two things. The first time it promptly attempted to see if I deleted tracks without checking them in, and the second time I got the good old "Initialized by a program other than SonicStage" message.

Just to be sure that I hadn't messed up the recorder itself while doing the modifications, I tested the recorder in it's normal way and it works fine.

Moral of the story: HiMD TOC Cloning does not seem possible. At least not in the way standard MD TOC cloning was accomplished.

Edited June 27, 2006 by raintheory

[Skradgee]

Interesting. TOC cloning saved my butt a few times in the past with legacy MD recordings. It's a shame that we don't have recovery tools or a hack like this to recover Hi-MD recordings. Hopefully Sony will realize this and provide us with something like that in the future. Thanks for testing.