Missing SD Card Files

[Dan Hasson]

Hi all,

On one of my recent productions we used a Tascam DR-701D for a few days of the shoot. The rushes sound great and so we were all happy.

However, just now I have gone through the rushes and on one day, a bunch of sound files are missing! We used a checksum verification when backing up on the shoot days and there were no issues. By chance that shoot days SD card did not get formatted and I still have it as it was from the day.

So, the sound at the start of that day and the end of that day is on the SD card (as well as the drives it was backed up on). However, everything in between the start and end of the day is not. This has not made a gap in the file numbering, it still went in numerical order but there is just a load missing.

 

I have of course contacted the sound recordist. I do trust them completely as we are friends. Unfortunately they do not know what could have gone wrong and swears they remember the slate tone at the head and tail (it was set to have this) going off and seeing the timecode roll for each clip as they would always check.

We used various data recovery softwares today on the SD card and nothing. 

I know the most likely answer is that they're gone forever and we have no chance. I thought it best to ask everywhere I can though in case anyone has any ideas and my only hope is that I still have the SD card as it was on the shoot day. Even though we used data recovery I'd still love to hear if anyone has any recommendations.

 

Thank you,
Dan

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

That‘s bad luck.

Did you try the software „Recoverit Data Recovery“? Or some professional service that offers data recovery?

Did you check the SD-card‘s „write protection“-switch? Sometimes it gets enabled by accident when putting the card into the device (camera, PC, recorder, …). Depending on the file-system (VFAT32, NTFS,…) and OS (Windows, Linux, MacOS,…), there is also a software flag that can turn the whole card or a whole partition write protected. There are also some viruses/ransomwares that can turn SD-cards to „read only“.

I also had some USB-sticks/SD-cards/Micro-SD-cards that suddenly stopped working after one or two months without any obvious reason.

Also check the Tascam‘s sd-card-slot for dirt. And test it with a different card.

I hope that you can recover your data! Good luck!

Jörg

Edited June 20, 2023 by Joerg Polzfusz

[Joerg Polzfusz]

As you seem to be located in London, you might want to contact these companies:

https://www.ontrack.com/en-gb/data-recovery/london
 

https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/

 

(I have never used their services. But a company that I used to work for once used Ontrack (German branch) to recover data from a crashed hard drive. They complained about the invoice. But more than 95% of the physically damaged hard drive was rescued in only a few days.)

Of course, there’s also the chance the the Tascam simply failed to record. Hence, there might be nothing to recover.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Joerg Polzfusz

[Dan Hasson]

Hi @Joerg Polzfusz, thanks for getting back to me.

I tried some other software but I'll try Recoverit now and see.

I also took it to one data recovery expert who could not recover. I'll get a quote from those two companies you linked and try them but I'm giving up now. It either looks like ADR or re-shoots...

Thanks again for taking the time to research some places!

Best,
Dan