After getting in a bit of a mess with the Sony Clip Browser software, I decided to start again and clicked to delete a clip from the bottom panel, thinking I was just deleting it from the browser. It deleted everything - four continuous clips lasting about 50 mins, from a 16 Gb SxS card!!!

It wasn't for a paid job, but it was irreplaceable personal footage, so unless there's some miraculous way of recovering data as you sometimes can with disk drives, I've lost the lot!

Big lesson - copy everything first.

But ... does anyone know whether, if I've not recorded anything else onto the same card, whether the data might still be "there" but invisible??

Were you working off the SxS card itself or SXS files that had been downloaded onto the computer? If its the latter my guess is the files ought to be there somewhere on your disk but i wouldn't do anything with the disk until you find someone who can recover files - I'm no expert though.


If you were working from the disk i don't know. It does point up a cardinal rule though that most people working with the P2 system have held to. Never work with them or important them directly into your computer from the P2 or SxS disk itself. Always first copy them to the hard drive. The main concern there is the possibility of corruption, but this is another case in point.

Good luck

Lenny Levy

The data may well still be there if you haven't further messed with the card yet, but you'll need some sort of file utility to check. There are several free file recovery utilities available on the internet and I used one of them successfully on a Firestore drive, but I can't remember which one. Here's a Google list:

http://www.google.com/search?q=free+file+recovery

Presuming that the file system operates like most any other disk based storage, the data is still there, as long as you don't do ANYTHING that would record over it. Sony even had a utility to recover files off their memory sticks for just such a reason - don't think it would work on the new cards, but any disk recovery utility that can access the card (I'm presuming it shows up as a "drive" somehow?) should be able to restore the file information.

Usually it's like if someone threw out the index cards at the library - the books are all still there, just no guide to show you how to find and read them - a file restore/recovery utility puts all the index information back so the stupid computer can find the 1's and 0's again!

You might contact Sony support - I'd bet they have something, as I can't imagine this is all that unusual...

Copy Data to hard drive. Copy that to DL-DVD. Don't delete anything from the hard drive until that DL-DVD is burned. Delete from card ONLY after the data is at least copied to the hard drive.

Search and Recover is made just for this kind of thing, pretty good from what I understand.

http://www.iolo.com/sr/4/

- Ray

All of the above is good advice but there's another reason why you should copy files to the HDD first. If you have a clip split over two cards you cannot join it from the mxf files and the clip browser will not be able to stitch the files as it can only access one card at a time.

Would search and recover work on the SxS or on a P2 card though? Wouldn't it be a different file structure?

Would search and recover work on the SxS or on a P2 card though? Wouldn't it be a different file structure?

It's a pretty straight forward rule: As long as your computer can mount the media (HD, floppy, disc, CD, DVD, whatever) the recovery program can do its miracle and read your seemingly deleted files - which did not really get deleted, just their name(s) in the directory. Even if you messed around with the media in the meantime, there is a good chance to be able to recover a few of the files, however no parts of them, only those that were not affected with your messing around.
You have mostly no chance at all to recover deleted files if you reformatted your media in the meantime.

Hope this helps

Which computer or operating system are you working with?

I'm on a mac which does not seem to be covered by Search and recover. must a Mac equivilent though.

Would search and recover work on the SxS or on a P2 card though? Wouldn't it be a different file structure?

My guess would be that the SxS cards use FAT32 formatting; not sure about P2.

I'm on a mac which does not seem to be covered by Search and recover. must a Mac equivilent though.

Disk Warrior is a highly touted tool for file and disc recovery on the Mac platform.

-gb-

Thanks for all the replies - I've tried a couple of downloaded recovery programs without success so far, so I've just (Monday morning) taken the card and card reader to my local Computer shop in the hope that .......

will report the results.

I wouldnt take it to you local computer store. Unless they have people that know how to do it they might do more damage. Look on google for a place near your house that does data recovery. It will cost you but those places usually have a very high rate of recovery.

Try this link:

www.sandisk.com

and search for Rescue Pro. This will direct you to the download site.

I've be well served with that app.

Hope this helps

Thanks Peter - I have emailed Sandisk to see whether Rescue Pro works with SxS cards - it's not currently on their list, but here's hoping.

Grrrrrrrrraaaaahhhhgh!

I have to admit that I was thinking to myself when I read this post - how can you be so stupid and delete your only copy.
Now - today I did just that! I was on a shoot and wanted to delete some images on my external drive to make room for a backup of the files I had just copied from my SxS-card. I used Clip Browser and I thought I had only selected the old clips. I hit the delete button and it trashed my new material instead. I don't know if I had made some mistake or if ClipBrowser does not care which of its two windows is active when you press the delete key. Anyway, I lost an 8 GB card of just recorded material. We rerecorded some of it but I have lost some very good pieces of interview and images.

I have tried Final recovery and I thought that I saw the clips for a while but after rescanning the card they disappeared before I could save them.

Peter - Have you had any success yet?

Anyway I am going to stop using clip browser on shoots. There is just to much risk for mistakes and not enough confirmations boxes before you do something stupid.

I realise that Clip Manager is needed to combine clips spanning over two cards but as long as I keep the BPAV-folders separated within different folders named 1, 2, 3 etc I will be fine and can combine them with Clip Manager when I get back from the shoot, right?

Sorry to hear of your experience Ola (but happy it's not just me!!).

I have currently left my card and reader with a professional data recovery service, who will charge me about $200 if successful, and $60 if not. I should know by tomorrow at the latest.

When I selected a single clip in the lower window to delete, I thought I was just taking it out of the project. The warning message "Are you sure you want to delete?" added nothing to my knowledge, whereas a more thoughtful design would have had it saying "Clicking Yes will delete the data from your removable media - do you want to proceed?"

I though I had read somewhere that it was possible to copy and convert to mxf all in one operation, but I'll never try that again!

I have now managed to salvage most of my clips using Meetsoft Final Recovery 2.2. For some reason I could not find any data on my card when it was plugged into my laptop. However, when I put the card in my camera and connected it using USB I could see the lost content.

I recovered all the MP4-files. BUT when I play them back they have no audio. I have not yet tried importing them into my editor but I have a question: How can the audio be gone? Isn't the audio part of the MP4-file? That is all I am supposed to need isn't it? I tried importing one of the clips into Clip Browser as well but clip browser said it was an invalid clip. Could some kind of corruption lead to this? When I playback the file using M-mplayer (open source) it plays back fine but with no audio!!

I just tried converting one of the files to Avid DNxHD using an application called "XDCAM EX to Avid". During the conversion I got loads of error messages about missing I-frames and stuff. I don't know much about recovering files but is it possible that the recovered file is damaged and that is why I lost the audio? I thought it should be ok if I managed to recover it.

Yes, I hope things turn out well for you Ola.

I really hope that if my files are recoverable, they will include audio, because my footage is of my son, a friend and I, playing an open air charity concert last weekend - the first time I have performed publicly since I lost my beautiful wife two years ago.

I do thankfully have an audio recording of the concert using my Zoom H4 recorder, but if I can recover the EX1 footage of the same performance, I'll be even more happy .....

Yes, I hope things turn out well for you Ola.

I really hope that if my files are recoverable, they will include audio, because my footage is of my son, a friend and I, playing an open air charity concert last weekend - the first time I have performed publicly since I lost my beautiful wife two years ago.

I do thankfully have an audio recording of the concert using my Zoom H4 recorder, but if I can recover the EX1 footage of the same performance, I'll be even more happy .....

I am very sorry to hear that it was such a memorable occation! I sympathize with you. Can't imagine the feeling in you gut when you realised that you had deleted the material. Anyway, since I could see my files using simple software downloaded from the net I am sure that the "pros" will find your material.

Thanks for those kind thoughts Ola - I'll let you know how it turns out ...