How do I recover sound files broken in 6 second chunks?

[Neil M]

I made some sound recordings in audacity which I deleted in error. The files last about an hour each. I have recovered the data for each of the files, comprising of lots of subdirectories, and further nested directories, reducing down to 6 second chunks of playable sound. I understand that the chunks are labelled randomly. Is there any way to reassemble the chunks to make the original sound files?

[Gale Andrews]

I made some sound recordings in audacity which I deleted in error. The files last about an hour each. I have recovered the data for each of the files, comprising of lots of subdirectories, and further nested directories, reducing down to 6 second chunks of playable sound. I understand that the chunks are labelled randomly. Is there any way to reassemble the chunks to make the original sound files?

So you saved this recording as an Audacity project? Did you export a WAV file as backup? That is always a good idea.

Did you recover from the Recycle Bin or did you have to use data recovery software?

Data recovery software will often not preserve the timestamps of the AU files or may change the folder structure.

For an hour of recording there should probably only be a single "e00" folder with a number of "d" folders within that. The "d" folders contain up to 256 AU files.

You can fix the directory structure (or ignore it if there is no AUP file).

But if the AU files now have all the same timestamp and there is no AUP file, there is no way to recover the project except by dragging in each AU file and figuring out the ordering of the waves on the screen.


Gale

[Neil M]

Thank you Gale. That is very clear advice. Neil

[Neil M]

I have a fresh problem associated with this issue. The six-second sound file chunks that have been recovered are organised into directories and have file names like this:
e0000c6.au
e00000e9.au
e0000b0.au
e0000ad5.au
e0000a27.au
e0000a0f.au

Do these files names help me sort the chunks out into their original order? The original recordings were over 1 hour long, so trial and error alone makes this a very big piece of work. Is there a logic to the file names that corresponds to the chronological order?

Thanks, Neil

[steve]

Do these files names help me sort the chunks out into their original order?

No.

Is there a logic to the file names that corresponds to the chronological order?

No.

If the recording is unedited, then you may be able to put them in order by renaming the files according to their creation / modified time (using a bulk renaming application), but if the recording has been edited in any way the time stamps will no longer be in the necessary order. Even if unedited, you may have difficulty determining the appropriate channels if the recording was stereo.

The short version is that you need the AUP file.
The long version is: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/re ... ually.html

[Gale Andrews]

You didn't say you how you recovered these files. If these files all have the same or similar timestamps from the date you recovered them then there is nothing you can do to order them correctly. All you know is that the fourth digit (fifth character) of the file name is the same as the number of the "d" folder the files should be in. So the files you mention were in the "d00" folder.

Even that tells you nothing if you edited the recording.

Gale