Rogue track mark created by stop button.

[infoman]

Hi

The following problem has already a post about it: http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=17507

However I'm going to list my experience and issues as it may be useful to someone else, or generate new ideas. Am I of course going to try out the advice listed the above post and I'll post back my results.

On Tuesday I deleted two tracks from a recent live concert as they contained silence before I plugged in my mic. When I hit the stop button to save my work, it added a track mark. I am using an a MZ-RH900. At this point I was now 1 minute into an 1 hour long track containing part of the concert. This is something my minidisc has never done before. The resulting two tracks now only playing odd noises in clusters of about 3, every 5-10 seconds. It sounds like it might be bits of concert I recorded. They are however, louder than normal.

I was fairly certain I won't be able to get the two tracks back as I believe Sony have made it impossible to recover such things. However reading the above post gives me 5% hope. I think something has been corrupted but I don't know what as all the other tracks are still fine. It's about 55 minutes of the concert which is corrupt. The recording must still be there in some form or another.

I am interested to know why the stop button created the track mark and I am also interested in knowing what bit might be corrupt? Is it the recording file or some DRM related file?

When I tried to replicate the issue by creating a few short tracks on a new disc and deleting some, the stop button behaved itself.

May be I should have just taken the battery out and none of the edits would have saved. I haven't made any track mark changes to the disc since as that might make the problems even worse.

I am finding in recent times that when I hit the stop button it advances to the next track instead of stopping.

I assume minidiscs couldn't corrupt that easily (computer based software problems excluded).

I am beginning to think I shouldn't be using minidiscs any more. After all one can't buy them very easily unless they use the Internet. May be I should revert back to tape. Although that's starting to die out, there are more places which sell them.

UPDATE:

I just tried to play the tracks in Sonic Sstage (ver. 3.2). Track 1 caused Sonic Stage to hang and Track 2 caused Sonic Stage to close down without any error messages. I can play from track 3 onwards as those are not corrupt.

I was able to load up the two tracks to my computer but of course track 2 on my computer caused Sonic Stage to shut down without error message. When I tried to convert both tracks to wav. Track 1 became a 44 byte file and track 2 justed caused Sonic Stage to crash....

What would happen if I deleted the 2nd track mark (which first caused this problem)? Would that help or would I make it all worse. What about adding an additional track into track 2 or even track 1?

I have no other Hi-MD recorders so I can't use them to play the disc.

Has any one ever been able to get Sony to recover discs for them? I suspect not.

Kind regards

Infoman

PS I must thank people for their stealth recording techniques. I don't normally ware glasses, bar sunglasses, so it's a whole new experience.

Edited November 29, 2006 by infoman

[Hungerdunger]

I am interested to know why the stop button created the track mark and I am also interested in knowing what bit might be corrupt? Is it the recording file or some DRM related file?

Did you mean "NH900"? I can't help with the corruption issue, but I can tell you that the NH900 is notorious for faulty buttons.

I'm on my second one, having returned the first to the vendor, and both have developed faults with the stop/pause button and the NAVI/Menu button. I think you'll find several references to the problem if you search.

ISTR that someone suggested that it could be cured by removing the battery for a couple of minutes, but that never worked for me. I try to use the controls on the remote whenever possible, but of course that means you can't use the Line-Out setting.

[infoman]

Thank you for your helpful reply.

Your right it is the NH. I was partly remembering my R900, which I have fond memories of.

I have problems with the navigation/menu button but I just put it down to being poorly designed.

My unit is just over 2 years old so do you think I have a case for saying the unit hasn't lasted as long as such a device should be expected to last, given that it's out of it's 1 year warranty (UK)? I will search the issue on the forum.

I will try the battery advice. I've not touched the internal battery but I have changed the AA battery since I used it and also run it off the mains from time to time so I doubt it will make any difference.

I am still interested in knowing whether removing the track mark would solve my corruption. I'm afraid to do it in case I make matters worse. May be it is a FAT32 problem, I'm not sure. I will have to be extra careful from now on.

Kind regards

Infoman