Accidentally erased my Akai DR8- any help please!?

[Dai Williams]

I was going to "minimize" my disk after a day of recording: (getting
rid of all the unused takes) and I accidentally slid the wheel to the
wrong place and erased the entire disk.

I think I 'erased' the disk rather than 'formatting' it because the
process was very quick- just about 4 seconds, and the display didn't
come up with the 'veryfying / good 00000' display that it is supposed
to when it's formatting a disk.

I've spoken to a friend and he say's the data probably isn't gone,
it's just been marked by the hard disk to be overwritten- so I haven't
touched the unit at all (appart from to hit the 'undo key'
frantically!- which didn't work) He also said it might be possible to
disasemble the unit and hook the acctual internal SCSI hard disk to
either my G4 or another PC- and dump the files onto there, or into
cubase.

The unit it a Hard Disk Recorder Akai DR8 digital 1997 (I think) with
an internal SCSI hard drive.

Does anyone here have any experience or ideas on this problem because
I'm at my wit's end right now.
thanks, Dai








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[Rob Reedijk]

This is not good. I assume you have emailed Akai tech support.
The other possibility is there was a (no longer supported)
way that allowed Logic to use the Dr8 as a front end recorder.
Maybe Logic can get at the files. (we are talking about a
snowball's chance in hell here since you would have to find
the correct version of Logic and possibly install some cards
in the Dr8 to make this work.

Good luck, and sorry about this problem.


Rob R.

Dai Williams <dai@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> I was going to "minimize" my disk after a day of recording: (getting
> rid of all the unused takes) and I accidentally slid the wheel to the
> wrong place and erased the entire disk.
>
> I think I 'erased' the disk rather than 'formatting' it because the
> process was very quick- just about 4 seconds, and the display didn't
> come up with the 'veryfying / good 00000' display that it is supposed
> to when it's formatting a disk.
>
> I've spoken to a friend and he say's the data probably isn't gone,
> it's just been marked by the hard disk to be overwritten- so I haven't
> touched the unit at all (appart from to hit the 'undo key'
> frantically!- which didn't work) He also said it might be possible to
> disasemble the unit and hook the acctual internal SCSI hard disk to
> either my G4 or another PC- and dump the files onto there, or into
> cubase.
>
> The unit it a Hard Disk Recorder Akai DR8 digital 1997 (I think) with
> an internal SCSI hard drive.
>
> Does anyone here have any experience or ideas on this problem because
> I'm at my wit's end right now.
> thanks, Dai
>

[Nelson]

dai@blueyonder.co.uk (Dai Williams) wrote in message news:<bc776db1.0308251401.1f88855f@posting.google.com>...
> I was going to "minimize" my disk after a day of recording: (getting
> rid of all the unused takes) and I accidentally slid the wheel to the
> wrong place and erased the entire disk.
>
(In my best Nelson (from the Simpsons) impersonation):
Haha!

But seriously folks, this is a part of recording.

Where do you think the band Erasure got their name? Their best
recorded stuff was erased. All the released stuff was their outakes.



> I think I 'erased' the disk rather than 'formatting' it because the
> process was very quick- just about 4 seconds, and the display didn't
> come up with the 'veryfying / good 00000' display that it is supposed
> to when it's formatting a disk.
>
> I've spoken to a friend and he say's the data probably isn't gone,
> it's just been marked by the hard disk to be overwritten- so I haven't
> touched the unit at all (appart from to hit the 'undo key'
> frantically!- which didn't work) He also said it might be possible to
> disasemble the unit and hook the acctual internal SCSI hard disk to
> either my G4 or another PC- and dump the files onto there, or into
> cubase.
>
> The unit it a Hard Disk Recorder Akai DR8 digital 1997 (I think) with
> an internal SCSI hard drive.
>
> Does anyone here have any experience or ideas on this problem because
> I'm at my wit's end right now.
> thanks, Dai
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

[Roger W. Norman]

I can give you only one glimmer of hope and it's an expensive one. I doubt
that the formatting on the drive can be read by either computer platform,
but even in the event that it can, AND a standard method of erasure
occurred, then you'd have raw data with the first letter of the filename
erased, so when the file system sees a need to write something it just goes
to the first available block with no first character in the filename. This
is old Norton's type of stuff where you'd have to go back in and rename each
file simply by inputting a first letter for the name of the file. IF you
haven't done any other types of operations on the drive.

But, that isn't really my glimmer of hope. I'd suggest, if it were
important enough data, to have a hard disk forensics company get your data
for you. Important means that it's far less money to pay $1000 for data
recovery rather than re-record.

The problem is just how Akai creates the file system. But there are data
recovery companies you could at least check with. Raw data is easy enough
to get back, even if it were in one long data stream. The problem is having
the tools and knowledge to use them and know what you're looking at when you
look at raw data on a screen.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio
Purchase your copy of the Fifth of RAP CD set at www.recaudiopro.net.
See how far $20 really goes.




"Dai Williams" <dai@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:bc776db1.0308251401.1f88855f@posting.google.c om...
> I was going to "minimize" my disk after a day of recording: (getting
> rid of all the unused takes) and I accidentally slid the wheel to the
> wrong place and erased the entire disk.
>
> I think I 'erased' the disk rather than 'formatting' it because the
> process was very quick- just about 4 seconds, and the display didn't
> come up with the 'veryfying / good 00000' display that it is supposed
> to when it's formatting a disk.
>
> I've spoken to a friend and he say's the data probably isn't gone,
> it's just been marked by the hard disk to be overwritten- so I haven't
> touched the unit at all (appart from to hit the 'undo key'
> frantically!- which didn't work) He also said it might be possible to
> disasemble the unit and hook the acctual internal SCSI hard disk to
> either my G4 or another PC- and dump the files onto there, or into
> cubase.
>
> The unit it a Hard Disk Recorder Akai DR8 digital 1997 (I think) with
> an internal SCSI hard drive.
>
> Does anyone here have any experience or ideas on this problem because
> I'm at my wit's end right now.
> thanks, Dai
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

[kooz]

Dai - DO NOT connect this drive to any other system unless it's at the
data recovery house. What happened to me (under similar
circumstances) was the recording was lost. your friend's G4 will see
it as an unformatted drive, and when you re-connect it to the DR8, the
Akai OS won't recognise it's own format...and I didn't have the G4
format it!
Luckily for me, it wasn't something a client had paid for, just a
recording of some buddies jamming.
As always YMMV, but best of luck! -kooz


dai@blueyonder.co.uk (Dai Williams) wrote in message news:<bc776db1.0308251401.1f88855f@posting.google.com>...
> I was going to "minimize" my disk after a day of recording: (getting
> rid of all the unused takes) and I accidentally slid the wheel to the
> wrong place and erased the entire disk.
>
> I think I 'erased' the disk rather than 'formatting' it because the
> process was very quick- just about 4 seconds, and the display didn't
> come up with the 'veryfying / good 00000' display that it is supposed
> to when it's formatting a disk.
>
> I've spoken to a friend and he say's the data probably isn't gone,
> it's just been marked by the hard disk to be overwritten- so I haven't
> touched the unit at all (appart from to hit the 'undo key'
> frantically!- which didn't work) He also said it might be possible to
> disasemble the unit and hook the acctual internal SCSI hard disk to
> either my G4 or another PC- and dump the files onto there, or into
> cubase.
>
> The unit it a Hard Disk Recorder Akai DR8 digital 1997 (I think) with
> an internal SCSI hard drive.
>
> Does anyone here have any experience or ideas on this problem because
> I'm at my wit's end right now.
> thanks, Dai
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged