Several months of work lost during backup

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Bad experience with the OT, once more! During a routine backup, done by regular usb connexion, my compact flash card crashed. As I had done other backups one or two months ago, I could get back to a previous state of my set, but during these months, I had done an enormous work that seems to be lost… Rusty is trying to help me: thank you!

That’s a big and paradoxical problem to loose data during a backup! Now, if I go on with Elektron gear and the OT, that means that I’ll always fear insecure with my work, even with a good quality compact flash card. And this is a problem.

I had 15 years of experience with the Yamaha RS 7000 groovebox, with only one crash of the smart media card. But this crash did not occurred during a backup, so it had only a small impact on my work.
In only one year of intense work with the OT (I own it since 3 years, but use it really only during this last year), I’ve lost nearly all my work. Interesting comparison, no?

I’m wondering if an other way to stock the OT’s data exists? I mean not using a compact card? Would it be possible to connect it to an hard disk drive?

#2

Ouch, that is so sucky…I feel bad for you. Its not the first time I’ve heard this kind of story with the Octatrack :S

I work with smartmedia too on my ES-1 but so far haven’t had any problem with it *taps wood.

#3

Ahh the forgotten middle child misbehaves again,

Sorry for the loss of that work

(though without pointing the finger, could be a faulty CF or even human error as sometimes happens)

#4

PM Sent.

#5

Thanx rusty!

Obviously, it’s a compact flash card problem. But what we can ask, is why Elektron did’nt choose an usb system/hard disk drive in order to save the data. Anyway, I’m wondering if it would be possible to connect a hard drive with a sort of DIY interface using the card connector?

#6

i’ve got 2 different CF>SD card adapters that i have yet to try

#7

Does this mean that it would be possible to connect directly an usb hard disk drive to the OT?

#8

doubt it, unlikely to work as is

but you would hope so.

#9

Because the access time of a CF card is like an order of magnitude faster than a harddrive?

#10

I don’t know. But I’ve read several posts dealing with crash problems with the CF card of the OT. So, if another way of saving data could be found, I would adopt it.

#11

I understand the pain of losing data but I think you’re overcomplicating things. Using a USB drive won’t help you, even if you got it to work. CF cards are less failure-prone then hard drives, and you wouldn’t have the speed to use flex machines properly.

Suggestions:

  1. If you’re backing up via the Octatrack, make sure you eject the CF card properly from your computer when done.
  2. If backing up by removing the card, be really careful when inserting it again so as not to bend any of the pins.
  3. Back up more often!
#12

Have you tried using an external CF reader? I have had a card fail so that it would freeze the OT but still mounts/reads/writes fine with an external CF reader. Another option is that if you can successfully mount the card either via the OT or external reader but still have corrupt files, you could scan the CF for errors and repair with a disk utility software.

#13

Yes, that’s what I’m doing, but without success for the moment.

#14

Sorry to hear that, if card physcally ok, only fs being damaged, you can try to use recovering software, I prefer GrtDataBack for fat, but there is a lot of options.

#15

I tried several recovering software (Recuva, GetDataBack, 7-data, etc.) without any success. Those softwares can recover audio files, but the project folders keep desperately empty. When I open the compact flash card, I see this :

projects.jpg1680×1050 240 KB

weird, isn’t it?

#16

Don’t think thats true anymore with SSD drives.

#17

Sucks. All drives can fail at any time so yeah, certainly can fail during a backup.

Only real solution is to do more frequent backups, especially after any important studio sessions so that if you do lose data, it will be less.

#18

Don’t think thats true anymore with SSD drives. [/quote]
True, but there’s still the issue of getting the cf slot to even recognise the ssd…

#19

Don’t think thats true anymore with SSD drives. [/quote]
True, but there’s still the issue of getting the cf slot to even recognise the ssd…[/quote]
I heard expessive CFs are pretty same that ssd even has garbage collector, but of course interface is ide vs sata/pci on modern ssd. Though CFast is a new incornation of CF but with sata interface.

#20

Thath programs seraching by known files format signatures.
I think you can try to send it so some recovering service. But there might be a problem because octactrack uses a special file format. May be elektron support can help? No one knows better their format.