Recovering audio from Masterlink

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Occasionally, people ask me if HD24tools can be used to recover audio from crashed MasterLink recorders. The answer is, "Not really", as the file systems of Masterlink and HD24 differ from one another. However, this page may help you to recovering the lost audio. These instructions will work on Windows only.

First things first

Do not panic. After the power loss, do not record anything on the drive, as it will overwrite the take being recorded before the power loss. Chances of recovery are generally better if the drive was freshly formatted before the recording (a quickformat is just as effective in this as a long format) because it helps keep the recording unfragmented/in one piece.

Get HD24tools

If you haven't yet, download your copy of HD24tools on the download page. Then, start up HD24connect with the crashed drive connected to your computer.

Find the drive number

Once the drive is connected to the PC (and keeping in mind the warnings in red as described on the HD24tools download page!) you'll be able to figure out the drive number by the same procedure as would apply for HD24 drives:

http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/hd24tools/drivenumber.html

The device will be called //./PHYSICALDRIVEx where x is the drive number mentioned before.

Select the drive

This drive name (//./.....) can be used with HD24tools with File->Recovery->Select device... HD24tools will not recognize the drive as a valid FST drive. When asked 'do you want to use it anyway?' say 'yes'. When asked 'load a header file?' say 'no'. Things on the HD24tools screen will look 'wrong' and messy, if you're lucky; possibly HD24tools will crash.

Save a drive image

If HD24tools doesn't crash, you'll be able to save a drive image of the Masterlink drive, provided you have enough free space on your Windows drive. If I recall masterlink drives are 40GB? You'll be able to save a drive image with File->Save drive image...

Split up the drive image

You can then proceed to cut up this file into smaller pieces with file splitter software (can't think of a specific program right now- you'll need to Google). The point of splitting up the file into smaller pieces, is so that the files will be be small enough to be handled with a wave editor (I'd say limit yourself to a gigabyte per file; most wave editors don't deal well with huge files. A gigabyte may in fact already be pushing it).

Load files into a wave editor

Why a wave editor? Because many wave editors can import raw data; masterlink audio is stored as stereo, channel-interlaced, little endian signed PCM. I assume you remember which sample rate and how many bits per sample were used on the masterlink. Sometimes these programs also ask for a byte offset to skip; no need to try any other values than 0, 1 and 2.

Search and rescue the audio

This would allow you to search for audio fragments, and copy/paste then to a new audio file.

A bit cumbersome, perhaps- if you prefer me to have a go at it, that can be arranged. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

Most importantly, probably- don't record anything on the given Masterlink drive until the audio is recovered.