Hi Everybody,
 
I have an oddball question today, the real solution to which is 'don't be an idiot and run out of hard disk space', but that ship has sailed & now I need advice on rescuing what I can from this session...

My session went quite long today & I ran out of disk space while recording the last cut.  I got the 'Unable to save entire recording, the audio disk may be full' error that we all know & love, but that is the same error message as with hard drive dropouts when the disk I/O isn't configured well, and other similar 'dropout' type issues when the disk isn't actually full, so all my searches for help on the matter come up with that issue/solution, rather than the actual problem I'm having, which is the disk is really full and now the files are corrupted when saving them.
 
After I got the message the track previews for these clips in Sonar disappeared, as if that whole take never happened, but the disk remained full.  I tried to drag/drop the files out of the Sonar Browser window onto another drive, but this just crashed Sonar.  The audio drive only has 640K available now, and all the files that were 'in progress' when Sonar used the last available bit are still on the drive, but they won't play, open, or import back into Sonar.  They're somehow corrupted.  Windows sees that those files are there, and they're showing the .wav file extension, but they won't play and Windows can't read the metadata on them (bitrate, length, etc.).  It's as though the .wav file container got opened, the raw data got put in until the disk became full, but the files never got 'closed' properly when saving as there wasn't enough disc space to close out the files.  So, now I have data from the session I'd like to recover, but no way to read those 'corrupted' files.

Does anyone know if the raw data in these files can be rescued?  I mean, Sonar filled up the bits on the drive in their own little filenamed 'containers', it seems like there's got to be a way to read the files into a program & re-save them as .wav (essentially, closing the .wav file container properly around the raw data I already have).  Right?!?
 
Help me Sonar Forums, you're my only hope....
 
A million thanks if you can rescue this session.
 
kn

It's actually more likely that the container as you call it only contains the file header and no raw data at all. But you can check that easily enough.

What size are the files?
You can work out exactly how big the files should be. You know the bit depth and sampling rate as well as how big the file is. With those data points you have enough info to calculate how long the file could be. This will tell you whether the file/s could be in tact. With perhaps a corrupt header.

See here for online calculators.
http://www.sounddevices.c...cord-time-calculations

It's important to remember, that a HDD needs about 10% of its capasity free, preferably a little more, in order to work reliably. Even if you have several gigabytes free, it may be the HDD can't operate anymore.

Have you tried to play with vlc-player ?
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
 
If vlc does not play the file, the header ist corrupted.
If only the end of the file is corrupted, then vlc will play.
 

I wouldn't be concerned about the lack of a visible waveform. That image is generated after the track has been recorded and can be regenerated at any time. Lack of disk space no doubt caused the waveform image to be aborted, but the audio may still be there.
 
The nice thing about wave files is that you can salvage them as long as the header isn't corrupt. I'd try the previous poster's suggestion and see if those files can be played back via WMP, VLC or Foobar2000. The latter can repair MP3s but I don't know about wave files. An editor such as Sound Forge or Adobe Audition might be able to do it.
 
I'd start by freeing up some disk space, obviously. Even if it means temporarily moving some projects to another drive. Then identify the names of the last clips you created. I'd open a command prompt and list them by date/time (type "DIR /od"). Then I'd test the most recent ones to see if they can be played back individually. You might luck out and they're all intact. Worst-case scenario is that one of them needs to be truncated.

Yes a Wave editor would be my first choice. Most Wave editors can open just about any file. 
 
http://www.wavosaur.com/
 
And even better : Free to try or only $19 or best deal in town $59 lifetime ownership. 
 
http://www.goldwave.ca/
 
I what Bit said is first clean up that drive so there's room to work. 
Storage is cheap. I've been told that best practice is to never go over 60% on an audio drive. Beyond that things slow down and files get scattered all over the disk. I don't think this applies to SSD drives however. 
 
 
 

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys.
 
More info - the files are mono 96/24, around 700MB each (and also copied to another drive that way, which I'm not sure would happen if the files were headers only & no actual data).  I had been hitting save periodically throughout the session while the tracks continued to record, so perhaps those interim save operations actually dumped data in the files instead of just writing headers.  The session was a 1.5hr long show with no interruptions so I couldn't stop them midway to hit save, thus the overrun.
 
I've tried Sound Forge but it's a pretty old version.  I'll try VLC, wavosaur, etc and report back my findings - I don't have any of those loaded on my DAW so i've got to try on another machine.
 
Thanks again, I'll repost tonight with some results.
 
Cheers,
 
Kris

Guys, if you're ever in Denver, hit me up & I'll buy you a beer! 
 
Foobar2000 totally worked.  Here's the scoop - VLC would play the files just fine, but would only re-save them in a format that was readable by Sonar or Sound Forge (and fixed the track container/metadata in such a way that Windows can now see the bitrate, length, etc.) by converting them & downsampling.  The 'RAW' option didn't work, and when running through their converter, it changed to 44.1/16.  I think this may be due to the soundcard on the laptop I was using not supporting anything higher, but it may just be a VLC issue (I checked the export options & 48Khz was the highest available, which also matches this lappy's soundcard), or a version issue.  Either way, I wanted them at the original 24/96.

At the end of the day, I used Foobar2000 to rescue the files.  It allowed me to open them & re-save them by running through their encoder with the options setup to not modify bit-depth or sample rate. 
 
It threw an error at the end of the conversion:
 
1 out of 1 tracks converted with minor problems.
Source: "C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\6.14.15, Rec (2732).wav"
  Malformed or truncated chunk found at 4088 bytes, claimed length 0 bytes, truncated to 728760320 bytes


But, now the file is readable by Windows, Audacity, Quicktime, Wavosaur (it wasn't directly readable by any of these progs, only VLC and Foobar2000).  The files now import back into Sonar.
 
I'd say unless you hear back from me, problem solved, Foobar2000 to the rescue, and good to know for Sonar users who may find themselves in similar waters.  Oh yeah, and keep an eye on that disk usage meter.  LOL
 
I love the forums, thanks guys!
 
kn

Good to see a user with only three posts calling for help, getting it, and actually returning to say thanks.
 
PS: Glad you're back in business!

Excellent. Thanks for letting us know. Often we never know. Personally now I know to use those programs instead of all the muck around with file sizes etc.