Octatrack Data Recovery Strategies

[tm_christ]

Hello All,

I recently ran into a lightly documented bug about using PATTERN tempo in the second row of the arranger:

A two line arrangement to crash yr OT

Been discussing the arranger a bit over in the OT feature request threads and while exploring it as a means to get better muting behaviour/other performance options I ran into multiple crashes. [image] If anyone wants to try the following 2 line arrangement on a fresh project (no samples or patterns needed)… [image] (Where B column setting is ‘pattern’ rather than a numerical tempo. The patterns can be any bank above A) On my OT it crashes with the on-screen error when switching to the se…

This resulted in my project losing BANK 02 and BANK 03. In my search for possible solutions, I came across a very old thread by a user who only made this post then seems to have disappeared:

Successful data recovery of lost project

Welcome @mangopip. Yes. No .strd files if you didn’t save. (imho strd = stored, even if it means something different, it is easy to remember). Using SAVE function creates a copy of current state work files. Using RELOAD replace current work files by strd files. (changing extension in both cases of course) You can RELOAD banks, can be useful if you don’t want to reload the whole project.

I have attempted to follow the instructions in the above thread, but to no avail. I am using the same data recovery software, and it located many old versions of my banks, but I can’t get things working beyond that. Here’s the rundown of my current situation:

• I CAN locate old versions of my banks, but only as “strd” files, which makes sense.
• I have so far tried two methods for using these old bank files. The first method is to leave the existing .work file and just overwrite the .strd file, then reload the bank. The other is to delete the work file and recreate it by copying the .strd file and changing its extension

Neither of these methods are working, though. The Octatrack gives a “parse error” when trying to reload the banks (or the whole project), then the banks become “unavailable” afterwards.

Has ANYONE else ever gone through something like this? I’m definitely prepared to walk away and just keep chipping away at new patterns, but I also lost about half my work for a liveset at the end of the month! Any help is greatly appreciated.

[sezare56]

@tm_christ

Has ANYONE else ever gone through something like this?

I had parse errors, solved by SAVE AS NEW, because it creates new banks. But it probably wouldn’t solve your problem, banks 2 and 3 would be probably blank.
But you can try.

Eventually post faulty banks here, maybe someone could repair them.

I can check them and compare with a blank one with IMHEX but I am not sure to be able to repair them…

[sezare56]

@bamshanks

as they are stored with the bank, at a defined offset in the ram; which is also mirrored on the cf card.

@bamshanks ?

[bamshanks]

What’s the question?

[sezare56]

@bamshanks

question

About best practice for recovering corrupted files…

If the project hasn’t been saved I think it is better to avoid to load project, and then use recovering tools. I don’t remember any report about the way files are corrupted…missing bits ? bad index ? Which tools can be useful ?

I had a parse error 2 days ago, wanted to check but after loading project the corrupted file has been replaced by a new one automatically. But I could reload saved bank.