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[ajmogis]

OK, not exactly a formatting problem, but rather a problem with the format of a firewire drive out of the box.

My partner archived an album's worth of material to a firewire drive that he did not format after he took it out of the box.  He simply unpacked it (after buying it new), plugged it in to the G5 running OS 10.3.4, and it showed up the way one would expect a firewire drive to do.  He dragged all his files to the drive and they appeared to be successfully copied (not just shortcuts being created).  So he unmounted and disconnected the drive and shut it down.  This was the only thing that's ever been stored on this drive.

This morning when I tried to connect the drive, it would not mount.  I checked Disk Utility and could see the drive and the volume on it, but couldn't mount it still.  So I quit Disk Utility and rebooted.  Now the computer tells me that the disk contains no volumes that the Mac OS can read and asks me if I would like to reformat.  Of course I don't dare do that yet.  I've tried Hard Disk Warrior, but it doesn't even see the drive.

I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge of how drives are most often formatted (if at all) right out of the box.  I'm confused about how a drive could show up on the desktop, seem to work fine and have data on it, and then suddenly seem to not have anything on it - not even a recognizable volume.  If I had caught him in time I would have had my partner format the drive (something I always do before I use a new one).

And on a related note, does anyone know of a good data retrieval service?  We've got the budget on this project and it is imperative that we get this data back.

[nanoweber]

I had a similar problem to discover that the drive was formatted in the windows xp format (NTFS I think?). It's my understanding that if you format the drive fat32 that it can be used between pcs and macs. XP does not want to use fat32 and defaults to the newer pc format. In my situation the drive could be read but I could not write to it on a mac. You may try booting the drive on a windows xp machine and see if your files are there if you run out of other options. Not a windows person so I could lead you wrong on some of this but I think your issue is similar to the one I had.
Hope this at least heads you down the right path.

[bobkatz]

Try upgrading to Mac OSX 10.3.5. This may help. They report more reliable mounting of NTFS volumes. However, if I had a guess, this drive was probably formatted FAT32, though; that's the way I've seen PC drives set up.

Sometimes OSX machines up to (and possible even through) 10.3.5 do not like to mount PC drives. Wonder why

If the drive has not been damaged, it could be something funky with your Mac or OSX.

I think you should try mounting it on a Windows XP Machine, and if no result, also on a Mac OS9 machine. There's also MacDrive, which you can get a 10 day eval on. In all cases (including even the very first machine you had it on), do not give up if the OS does not first see the drive. Restart your computer and look for it again.

Finally, if after all that, no luck, go back to your first Mac and try the best drive recovery software, what's its name again.....

Good luck!


BK

[John Bailey]

AJ,
I tried to recover a drive for a client friend of mine last week that had exactly the same problem.  The drive (a Maxtor Firewire drive) had been purchased from a computer store, and then plugged straight into the studio's G5 and files were backed up to it.  When the drive arrived here in Toronto, it wouldn't mount properly on any of their Macs.  The problem was the same here...  The drive came preformatted as FAT32, and nobody thought to reinitialize the drive as HFS Extended (no Journalling).  

To further compound the problem, the initial ProTools sessions were recorded in the dreaded SoundDesigner2 format.  I don't know how the computer initially allowed itself to copy the files to this drive!  SD2 files have a resource fork that CANNOT live on a FAT32 volume.  Somehow, the computer allowed the transfer, but subsequently cannot mount it!  As Bob K suggested, maybe you can mount it on a PC and copy it to another drive, although in my case, there seemed to be a whole bunch of files that weren't visable from the PC (with or without MacDrive running).

Because the drive is formatted as FAT32, I couldn't get DiskWarrior to see the drive.  I was able to mount the drive on a Mac Dual 1.25GHz G4 with OS10.3.4, and Icons and files seemed to show up correctly, but the sessions were all missing at least 20 or 30 files.  I was reluctant to go up to 10.3.5 because Digidesign is saying that there are FireWire issues with it, and is not yet approved.

Anyhow, I wish I had more than just similar experiences for you...

I sure hope I don't see any more of this in the future...
Cheers,

[bobkatz]

John Bailey wrote on Wed, 25 August 2004 21:29

AJ, To further compound the problem, the initial ProTools sessions were recorded in the dreaded SoundDesigner2 format.

What is amazing at that point is that Pro Tools didn't balk. EVERYONE PLEASE NOTE HERE: SD2 FORMAT IS OFFICIALLY OBSOLETE. REPEAT: OFFICIALLY OBSOLETE. CHANGE ALL YOUR TEMPLATES TO USE BROADCAST WAVE. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200.

Anyway, if it turns out that John's description is exactly what happened on that other ill-begotten session, there are solutions, but the first one is to see if the files can be seen and found on any of the machines and methods that I suggested.

If they are in fact, SD2s on a FAT32 drive, let me know here, and I'll suggest some fixes.

Quote:

I sure hope I don't see any more of this in the future... Cheers,

That's for sure. Well, let's see what the original poster discovers as far as being able at least to mount this drive on a PC, because on a PC he will find his solution.

BK

[ajmogis]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions so far.  It appears all is not lost.  Our Windows XP machine could not read the drive.  It said the drive wasn't formatted and asked if I wanted to format it now.  However, I did get the drive to mount in OS 9 and copied the contents to a properly formatted drive.  All of the audio files seem intact (96kHz BWF), but now the problem is that the Pro Tools session files are all showing up as text files.  I tried adding the .pts extension to one of them but got:

Quote:

Could not complete the "Open Session..." command because: Logical end-of-file reached (-39) when reading "Traveling Blues"

when I tried to open the session.  Any ideas on how to get the PT session files back?

[studiomusic]

Try opening Protools, then going to the file menu then open session, or drag and drop the file to the Protools icon. Just make sure Protools is up first. Then when it opens, save it. I've had this a few times. Maybe this will do it?

[bobkatz]

ajmogis wrote on Thu, 26 August 2004 13:34

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions so far.  It appears all is not lost.  Our Windows XP machine could not read the drive.  It said the drive wasn't formatted and asked if I wanted to format it now.  However, I did get the drive to mount in OS 9 and copied the contents to a properly formatted drive.

Oh, that's good news!  Did it mount upon restart in OS9?  Did you have to use the Control Panel---"File Exchange" in order to mount the PC Disk?

Quote:

All of the audio files seem intact (96kHz BWF), but now the problem is that the Pro Tools session files are all showing up as text files.  I tried adding the .pts extension to one of them but got: Quote: Could not complete the "Open Session..." command because: Logical end-of-file reached (-39) when reading "Traveling Blues"

Ugg! I feel your pain. You might want to open the pro tools session file in BBEdit and compare it with an intact one and see what's missing, then edit that on.

Another possibility is for you to install PT on that OS9 machine that can read the original disc. See if the session files open... then save as onto the other drive.

I gather that pro tools files are PC/Mac compatible???  Another tought, try opening the file on a PC. I can't figure out why the end of file marker is missing... must have gotten lost when you copied the file to the new drive, which is why I'm suggesting you try opening the original session file on the original drive before you copied it over.

Good luck!

[dayvel]

Try this-

http://www.barebones.com/products/super/index.shtml

It's a "file typer" (changes the file type) for OSX.

[Bob Olhsson]

This happened to me.

There are some early Mac firewire drive formats that behave exactly this way. The rule for new drives is to use the Mac's "ERASE DISK" command before attempting to use a new drive.

Another issue is firewire cables. The most commonly sold ones are often intermittent and only "sort of" work because of the massive amount of error correction wrapped around firewire.

To get a PC capable session copy, you'll need to open it up on a Mac system (probably 96k capable) and use "save session copy" checking the "PC compatible" box. This will include conversions to .aif or .wav.

[ajmogis]

Thanks again for all the suggestions.  I've tried using BBedit, File Buddy, Resedit, and Super Get Info.  Nothing has allowed me to recover the session files.  I'm not a real expert at doing this kind of thing, so I only did what seemed obvious:  open with the previously mentioned apps and change the file type, creator, and icon to match a known PT session file.  No dice.  If anyone knows of something I could try beyond this, please let me know.

The audio files are intact as they are all Broadcast Wave Format.