TASCAM DP-24 - Lost Song Data - No Recovery!

S

SellYourMusic

New member
I hope what happened to me with my newly purchased DP-24 doesn't happen to any of you.

I worked for four weeks recording a song and laid down 24 tracks - and it was a long haul getting there.

Many hours and many takes, probably about 20 hours of work.

I maxed out the 2gb card that came with the unit and lo and behold I got a "FILE ERROR" - when the disk got full it corrupted the song
file and no amount of tech support or file recovery efforts have worked.

I tried copying the files to my computer, reformatting another card, transfering the files in to a newly created song, I finally got it to
transfer the files over through AUDIO DEPOT folder but none of the tracks will sync to each other.

Finally support told me to take the unit in to factory service along with the card to see if anything can be done, but after so many hours
of trying to recover files I'm just going to start over. By the time I'm done driving down there and leaving the unit for who knows how long
and then having to go pick it up - and even then it may not be corrected.

A lesson learned the hard way, friends:

From now on I'll use a 16gb flash card and also backup on my computer!

At least I think that way if a file got corrupted I might be able to reload from my previous backup, but this thing is pretty squirrelly
when it comes to accepting files.

Anyone else have this problem?
 
Yes, my DP-24 has crashed. Typically, you only lose a little bit.

However, the design of the DP-24 hides the slowness of writes to the operator. It does this by having an internal cache. It is actually a brilliant design in that long takes or short takes seem to only take a few moments to complete the writes on the memory card.

However, resource exhaustion is a problem with this product. Rule #1: When you run out of resources or whenever this unit appears hung, walk away from it for up to two hours. Eventually, you should hit a timeout event. Power cycling the DP-24 in many cases will corrupt your file system. Why? In order for the DP-24 to keep up with the writes, it has to cache lots of data. If this unit had a hard drive then this would be less of an issue.

Finally, I am not sure how you feel about this, but it might be a good idea to have this unit on a battery backup. However, a standard stand-by UPS might end up causing noise. Plus, I am not sure how the DP-24 will react to a less than perfect sine wave on the mains. The real solution would be for this unit to have a battery backup that protects the cache in case of power failure.
 
I had this same thing happen to me using an 8gig memory card. I spent a lot of time on this song and if corrupted on the last vocal track, such a let down. I might spend the time trying to sync the tracks back up form what I dumped on to my computer but it sounds like a nightmare.
 
Back-up, Back-up, Back-Up...

I always have a duplicate version saved in the DP24 along with the original. I call it version 2. I Update once any keeper changes occur.

I haven't used my DELL INSPIRION NETBOOK to back up yet...but I did delete a tune on the DP24 from the computer inadvertently, I believe. Thank God I had a back-up.

You got to train yourself in Back-up Protocol
 
Same thing happened to me also, so once bitten, twice shy: on any song that I'm adding a significant amount of new recording to I always do a copy on the same memory card (as Steve above suggests) and rename it v2, v3 etc every time I have aded another couple of tracks. So, if for whatever reason I lose the song, I only have to re-do the last two or three tracks. I always back up the memory card on my PC at the end of each day too. I've found that it helps to regularly 'Delete Unused' data (the non-wanted takes that its still storing) in the song memory order to make sure I don't fill the card up with unwanted data.
Backup, backup, backup.
 
I just lost a song to file error, it was not backed up. I already had a mix of the song, and went back into it after several months to add harmony vocals. Usually when I get a file error, I can put the disk in my computer and delete the last events, which are almost always the corrupt ones. It didn't work this time.
As a result, I took all 11 SD disks from my DP24 and copied them to folders on my computer. In the future, if a song goes bad, I can just copy the file from the backup.
 
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