HD-24 Major Mistake

G

getgo

New member
Please be gentle here, I am sick over the mistake I just made. I have been doing some backing vocals on a soon to be finished HD-24 project for myself and was attempting a 3 track cut and paste. It was a small section of the chorus that I thought I would use to open the song. I set the start point and then would set the stop point and then when I would play back the section I only get 5 seconds of playback. Exactly five. This is where it gets real bad. The manual has a blurb about buffering and I figure that is the problem so I head into the utility section to turn off the buffering. I do that then attempt to get out of utility and can't. I toggle over and over the pages and can't find the way out, Impatiently I hold the utility button down and the next thing I know, the machine erases the hard drive! It didn't even give me the option of denying the function. Now it gets worse,,,no back-up. I know, I know,,,,always back-up!!!!! Well I didn't. Question is, can this thing be retrieved?? I know I may be dreaming but at this point,I don't need a scolding, just simple yes or no will do,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,help....................
 
Ok,,after scanning the manual over and over, I see that when you attempt a cut/paste edit the machine will only play back the first five seconds and the last five seconds of an edit unless you press both edit start and edit stop at the same time.Sigh,,,,,,,if only I had understood that last night. My friend (that doesn't own an HD-24) thinks that the data can be retrieved since the erase occured so quickly. It did it in about 2 seconds! Because of this, he thinks that it couldn't have totally eliminated all my project so quickly. Is there hope for my project? HELP!!
 
I've never had to recover data from an HD24, so I can't say... but I suggest you contact Alesis Tech Support or try the HD24 group on Yahoo............
 
This would be a good question for Alesis tech support, IF you can wait the week for a reply that will not help you (typical response from them usually starts with "reboot the system", "install new driver", and "no, it can't do that"...)

Ed
 
I have to disagree Ed... lately, the couple of times I've contacted Alesis Tech Support they've been quick and helpful...

Seems they've improved in the last little while...!
 
getgo said:
I do that then attempt to get out of utility and can't. I toggle over and over the pages and can't find the way out,
Click to expand...

One thing about this. You don't get out of the utility menu by pressing the utility button.. Typically, you press Song Select, or maybe Locate select or something like that.
 
Re: Re: HD-24 Major Mistake

Meshuggah said:
One thing about this. You don't get out of the utility menu by pressing the utility button.. Typically, you press Song Select, or maybe Locate select or something like that.
Click to expand...
I guess that's why they call me a newbie huh??
 
Well, I just talked to Ty at Alesis, he said the header info on the disc appears to be erased. He suggested I try a data recovery place. I think I'll just go and shoot myself instead,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,sigh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
 
Just retrieve it from the backup copy on the other drive... you did make a backup first didn't you?
 
Yup, making backup's to the second drive. You DO have a second hard drive in their right?

The other engineer yesterday just recorded over a bit of a vocal track on a project he was working on. He didn't back up the song yet. Usually, we do our backup's to the DAW via the Ethernet. I do it at the end of every session. But you can just do it to the second drive. We decided that since drive to drive backups are in fact faster than the Ethernet, we will start doing that as a default.

Never assume your data is safe unless it is stored in two different places. That is an old rule of working with computers.

If you haven't recorded anything since your erased those headers, there is a pretty good chance that the data can be recovered. I am surprised that Alesis didn't at least offer to do this (for a fee of course) since they know exactly how the data is written to the disk in their proprietary format. If you HAVE recorded something since the erase, you could have very well recorded over parts of the disk that contain the data you want to save and the recovery probably wouldn't be complete.

Always back up your work. :)

Ed
 
Yeah Ed, I was surprised that Alesis didn't offer that service myself. I have bought another hard drive and don't plan on messing with the original one til I find out for sure the data is all gone so there is still a little hope. Question I have is, Lets say I have a 10 song project on a hard drive with many tracks on each song. Lets say I also have a backup of the project. Now, I go in one day and I lay several vocal tracks on sone 7 and call it a day. Do I;
A, Back-up the whole disc again?
B, Only back-up the song I added parts to?
C, If I only back-up the song I added parts to, should I delete the song from the backup that featured the original data?
D, If I backup the whole project again, do I first delete the data from the back-up?
E, Shut up, cause I'm making this way too hard??
 
I use 60GB 7200RPM drives and I make backup copies twice. For example, drive 1 is the work in process. Drive 2 is a clone of drive 1 and updated all the time. And the drive in the safe/vault is a clone of everything with 'nothing' deleted... I just add to it.

After the client leaves and adding the new work to the vault/safe drive, I pull all the drives and put them in the vault/safe. And then I put in all new drives for the next client or get their drives out of the vault/safe and put them in. Live and learn... lol.
 
I'm NOT surprised Alesis didn't offer....

While their tech support is apparently more responsive than before, their customer service policy is one entirely geared towards consumers, and not towards serving the pro-recording crowd....

An industry pro buying from a pro-oriented company would rightly expect (and actually get) service in the most critical of times (off-hours, weekends, etc...)...

Alesis is not such a company -- their market is prosumer and their product price tags reflect this... what you gain in reduced product pricing, you lose in off-business-hour aftersale support....
 
On the other hand, I have two Alesis ADAT-HD24's and have had NO problems with either of them, and the HD24 is a very stright foward recorder so no pro is going to have any problems operating it. So, unless your HD24 breaks down I see no reason for the need of tech support with their HD24.
 
DJL said:
On the other hand, I have two Alesis ADAT-HD24's and have had NO problems with either of them, and the HD24 is a very stright foward recorder so no pro is going to have any problems operating it. So, unless your HD24 breaks down I see no reason for the need of tech support with their HD24.
Click to expand...
I'm not talking about that kind of support -- I'm talking about the kind of support for getting pros through critical failures.... (ie, the drives fail midway through an important session and some recovery is needed....)

As for problems with the HD24 - sure - it's a good machine, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's infallible.... with hard drives and computers it's not a question of "if" they will fail, but "when".... and the HD24 is nothing more than a computer with specialized I/O and OS........ backups and recovery procedures are absolutely critical if the work is important to you.

Also -- take a look at the HD24 group on Yahoo -- plenty of trouble and failures being reported.
 
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