Help needed on data recovery of .wrk files and OLD hard drives?

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Kris002
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2013/01/22 12:20:19 (permalink)

Help needed on data recovery of .wrk files and OLD hard drives?

Hi all!  I'm new here and can't seem to find any info on my specific issue...

I have a buddy with three very old hard drives: one is still a standard, but two are 68 pin scsi drives. 

I have backed up the standard drive, but am am assuming that files the .wrk need are partially on the old drives. 

My question comes down to two parts:

Part 1:  Does anyone know how I can access the files on the old scsi drives externally? The computer they came from is dead.  I purchased a 68 pin to 50 pin scsi convertor and then a 50 pin to db25 convertor and lastly a db25 to USB. I can get the drives to spin up but my vista computer doesn't read/recognize the drive as a external HD. 

Part 2:  Once I access all the files...how can I piece the songs back together?   He has them as .wrk files and was using cakewalk audio pro 6.0 at the time and I have access to media creator 5 that reads the .wrk files but doesn't know where to look for the pieces that make up the songs. 

Cakewalk and similar programs are not my forte...I do data recovery and am trying to get his old songs back for him. 

Any assistance is greatly appreciated!
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    larrymcg
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    Re:Help needed on data recovery of .wrk files and OLD hard drives? 2013/01/22 13:10:52 (permalink)
    I've never used anything earlier than ProAudio9 but there may be similarities with PA6.  I also have no experience with media creator 5.

    The midi part of the song is in the wrk file but the audio part is not.  The audio files are in a separate place which could be on the same disk as the wrk  file or even on a different disk.  Maybe your buddy knows where they are?  In PA9 the audio is stored in wav files, all in one folder.  Also in PA9 they have weird names generated by the application.  This means you can't easily associate the wav files with the wrk files even if you find the folder with the audio files.

    There is a stand-alone Cakewalk tool called CWAF that can associate the wrk files and the audio files but CWAF needs access to both the wrk and audio files.  I don't know if it requires to be running on a system with the ProAudio application installed or not.

    Well, this probably didn't help but maybe someone will add more.....


    Intel Core i7-4790 @3.6GHz; 8GB; Win10 Pro 64bit; 1TB disk + 3TB ext disk; Midiman Fineline mixer; MidiSport 4x4 midi I/F; Roland JV-30 kbd/synth; Yamaha TG55 synth; Rx with 3 piece Home audio speakers; Sonar X3e Studio
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    larrymcg
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    Re:Help needed on data recovery of .wrk files and OLD hard drives? 2013/01/24 11:38:19 (permalink)
    Here's some more info from the PA9 world - maybe helpful.
    In a .wrk file with associated audio files, the name of the audio file is in clear text.  So you can open the wrk file with some text editor and do a search.  In PA9 the audio files are .wav files (they may have been called something else in earlier versions).  So, in PA9 you can search for .wav and you will be able to find the names of the audio files.  However, the .wrk file has only the filename part, not the path leading to the file.  The path leading to the folder with the audio files is stored in the registry.  For PA9 on Win XP it is at:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Calewalk Pro Audio\9.0\UserPaths
    The value of item WavFileFolder holds the full pathname to where the wave files are stored.
    All of this might be different for older versions of ProAudio but might be similar enough to provide clues.

    I imagine that you don't have access to the registry where ProAudio was installed so all of this is likely useless.  But maybe interesting to someone.

    Good luck,
    Larry


    Intel Core i7-4790 @3.6GHz; 8GB; Win10 Pro 64bit; 1TB disk + 3TB ext disk; Midiman Fineline mixer; MidiSport 4x4 midi I/F; Roland JV-30 kbd/synth; Yamaha TG55 synth; Rx with 3 piece Home audio speakers; Sonar X3e Studio
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