Corrupt files in a CF folder

I don't know if it's my MAC or the MPC2000xl that did this, but here's how a beat folder of mine looks like:



Any idea what could've caused this? Or more importantly: is there anything I can try to do to fix this? Not sure if this kind of sh*t is within the realm of what file recovery tools can do.

I'd hate to have to remake that beat...

I can't see from that image at all what is going on...I don't know if you shrunk it or if imageshack did.

I have had issues plugging my card into a mac before. It was related to the hidden files macs create.
There is also the issue if any of your files have names longer than 8 characters, they will be basically become worthless once you connect them to a computer.

If you get a version of the picture up that I can actually see a bit clearer, I might be able to help you out more.

Apple+Shift+4 will allow you to select only an area of the screen (vs the whole screen) and save the screenshot as a file...maybe try that just on the pertinent area.

That 0kb doesn't look good though. I've gotten that when I've had two files where the first 8 characters were the same, but they were different after that. Like snaredrum1 and snaredrum2 both get turned into snaredru...and computers do not like that.

Thanks, dude. Sorry about the size, I had to leave in a hurry after posting and didn't check if the picture was working right. Here:



I'm usually very careful with the 8 character thing, though. And the type of damage going on here would seem suggest a whole different animal...

OK. Now I'm majorly pissed and I only have myself to blame. I decided to do a backup of the whole CF card-- you know, JUST IN CASE-- but before doing that, I decided to delete another folder from the CF card (inside the mpc). The MPC froze while deleting the folder. And now 90% of ALL FOLDERS are gone with the wind. Time to start looking for good data recovery programs for mac...

Damn sorry to hear that.

Is that Finnish? Can the MPC handle those characters properly? I'm assuming so since it can probably handle japanese and I get the impression you've done this with success before. Have you?

Honestly I don't know what sort of 'file recovery' you can do to that.

At this point it sounds like that card is shot and I would keep it out of the MPC.

You could try to look at the card at a lower level, via the terminal in OS X. it will probably be in /Volumes/disk* something.
You can do "ls -l" to see a bit more info about the files. I don't know though, that is all strange to me. Doesn't seem to be like either of the scenarios I suggested earlier.

Haha, the language ABOVE the freaky characters is indeed Finnish (e.g. "muokkausaika"), but the origin of the weird symbols is a mystery to me too.

And you're right, file recovery probably won't work with that folder, but I haven't lost hope yet on the other folders I lost since those were technically OK to begin with...

Don't know how to work the terminal really, but thanks for the suggestion.

Hmm.. I tried a couple of data recovery programs and they were able to retrieve most (all?) wave files, HOWEVER, not the filenames (i.e. only wavefile001.wav ... wavefile153.wav). It also seems that .aps, .all, .mid. files, because of their rarity, are not natively recognized by these programs. I had one program "learn" these file types, and it found a bunch of them, too. But, again, with the generic file names so I have no idea which file belongs to which beat.

Has someone been in this situation before? Are there any data recovery programs (preferably for Mac, but PC is fine too) that are actually able to recover the unique file names AND folders??? Thanks.

Wow that is great news!
Which program did you use?

Disk Drill (free) and Data Rescue 3 (not free) both found the wave files, but only Data Rescue was able to locate the MPC type formats (.all, .aps, etc.) after the "learn" process. Apparently, the folder data and the file names are "irretriavably lost" due to some native Mac thing, though, which sucks in a major way. Thus I'm unsure about what exactly was found and what wasn't. The fate of that first corrupt folder is still a mystery.

I had some backups, luckily, but I'm still going to have to try to put together about a dozen beats by going through a shitload of files and mixing and matching .pgm's and .all's/.mid's. On top of that, it seems that Data Rescue thinks that .pgm and .aps files are the same thing, which will cause some more headache...

Damn that is just so sh!tty to hear...I've been in similar situations.

I want to say though, keep at it, and maybe take a break from it for a day or so. There have been more times than not when I have thought older sampler data was lost, but I was eventually able to retrieve it in some round-about way.

Of course, it's those times when it was actually lost that has gotten me into the habit of bouncing to tape as often as possible.

Maybe the most useful thing to do would be to figure out WHY it happened, so it never does again. Maybe you should send the CF card out to sea on a burning ship?

Damn... Not one of the .PGMs, .APSs, .ALLs or .MIDs work, I get all kinds of errors trying to load them up. All the wave files work fine, and in preview mode I can even see the original file names (!), BUT that doesn't really cheer me up one bit since I have all the .wav files backed up on my computer anyway. Losing all the sequences is what truly bums me out.

You're right I should take a break from this. Shit is ruining my mood.

Why it happened? I know I recently took out the card once or twice without hitting the eject button in the menu - that's the only thing I can think of. Tests don't show any problems with the card itself...