DR-40 fell while recordings

[Sannicandro]

Yesterday I recorded an interview on my DR-40 using two lavalier mics in the XLR inputs, recording in dual, as I have often done. During the interview, the subject pulled away at one point to reach for something on their bookshelves and the DR-40 fell a short distance to the floor. When I picked it up, the device had turned off. It powered back on immediately with no trouble (the batteries had not come out). However, once on, the file that had been recording was no where to be found.

Now in front of my computer (a Mac), I've had a look at the SD card, hidden files, and used Disk Drill to attempt recovery, all to no avail. Does the Tascam write directly to the SD card while recording? If so, is there anyway to recover this recording from the 'empty' space on the SD card? Any other recovery apps I might try? Any other potential fixes? Thanks in advance.

MP3 320k
48k
Phantom on
2GB SD card

 

[Art Anderson]

My experience is that if the power is interrupted, or the batteries run down naturally to zero, or the SD card fills up, all while recording, the current session is lost. There are no partial files to be found on the card. I've had all three of those situations occur. The unit hasn't been dropped, but it used to just shut off for no reason. Since I've gone to USB power most of the time and it's mounted on a mic stand, it's been OK.

What I would like as a future firmware upgrade is for the DR-40 to have an option to close a recording file and save it when it detects the batteries are almost finished or the SD card is almost full. That would save something instead of nothing. It already "knows" that information because it monitors and displays the battery status, and there is a menu item to show the SD card capacity.

Changing subjects, what lavalier microphones are you using with the DR-40? You like them?

 

[Sannicandro]

Thanks, Art. Well, that would be really unfortunate if it's all lost, and I second such a firmware update. But I've also learned some valuable lessons: stop and save files periodically, whenever possible; don't put the recorder in a situation where such a fall is possible; and always has a second recorder running just in case. If I can't recover this session I'll have really lost some great stuff! Well, live and learn...

As for the lavs, I'm using Movo LV4s, carioid and omni, depending. I am not a sound pro and haven't used any others (at least not outside of a school project many years ago), so I can't do a one-to-one comparison, but for the price, I'd say I'm very pleased with the sound quality and the build. I've had these for something like 2+ years and used them on maybe 10 one on one interviews, so not a huge amount but so far so good. I've also used them for some less conventional purposes, using the cardioid as a kind of handheld mic for sound design, ambient music, etc sorts of things.

 

[Sannicandro]

UPDATE: I can now confirm that the DR-40 certainly does write directly to the SD card, as I suspected. Using Disk Utility, I made a disk image of the SD card. First I tried to do this [Format: Read-only; Encryption: none], and this produced the MP3 files from earlier in the interview that I was already able to access. That is, of the 2GB on the disk, I could see 390 MB and the rest was blank. In order to copy the entire drive, including the 'blank' bits, I then tried [Format: DVD/CD master; Encryption: none]. I opened the resulting disk image, ie. "DR 40.cbr" in VLC, and it played the audio, as one long file. However, the audio is chopped up... it plays a short segment, and then repeats it, and then moves on to the next, and repeats it, and so on. It does this with the legit MP3 files, but also eventually it gets to the material from the file that never saved and is missing. So the data is there, somewhere, it's just a matter of being able to figure out how to reconstitute it properly. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Also, I forgot to mention I was recording in dual ext 1/2 (stupidly, I had intended it do be ext ind.) so that may make things more complicated.

 

[jasonWM]

Hi, I suggest you can use SD card recovery software for mac. I found some of data recovery which is helpful for recovery data from SD card. Please find below:

1. Easeus Wizard
2. Stellar Photo Recovery
3. Hetman Recovery

I hope these all will helpful for you!