Can RedUnDead Save Non R3D Files?

[Shane Smith]

RedUnDead is a Godsend of a program, but I'm wondering if there is any way to possibly use it to recover files other than R3D? Looking to recover some audio files off of an erased drive, and thought I would at least ask the question before looking at some other software.

Thanks

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Red Undead is looking for very specific flags while it crawls, bit by bit, over what's there. When you erase a file, or format a drive, all that happens, is the drive is told "Hey! Don't look over there!" and the drive listens. It doesn't actually write over the file that's there, unless you do some sort of secure erase.

Meaning, the data is still there, it's just a question of access.

There are other software options out there that do something similar to Red Undead. Unfortunately, I don't know any of them off the top of my head. But Red Undead will only work for Red files.

 

[Shane Smith]

Thanks. Red UnDead is great, and I was just hoping that there was some way to expand it's search criteria beyond R3D files because it is better at recovering files than anything else I've tried before.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

Thanks. Red UnDead is great, and I was just hoping that there was some way to expand it's search criteria beyond R3D files because it is better at recovering files than anything else I've tried before.

It's better precisely because it has such a narrow focus. If you were to add file types (and thus, specific orders of Ones and Zeroes for it to parse through and match up to the flags for other specific file-types) it would take a lot longer and work not-as-well. Nature of the beast, unfortunately.

 

[tomspark]

Can reundead work on corrupted r3d files copied to another drive? ie no longer on the original 64GB ssd. There should be no reason the files were corrupted in the copying from the original ssd, and the files actually played back off the original ssd in camera but now in red cine they simple show as being offline now even though they have large amounts of associated data present... I have contacted red regarding this issue and there have been no suggestions as to how I can proceed if at all.
Cheers

 

[Marc Wielage]

You could try Data Rescue, which has saved me a few times (specifically with audio files) on hard drives:

http://www.prosofteng.com/

Available for both Mac and Windows. It will specifically work with erased files, but you may only get chunks of them (or a handful of files) if the drive has been recorded on again after formatting.

It's for reasons like this that I always recommend a dual-drive approach to sound, usually with a simultaneous hard drive and a CF card backup. Many pro recorders will do this. I have had very rare occasions where one failed and the other worked fine, but the odds are against both failing at the same time. A few new recorders, like the Zaxcom Nomad and the Sound Devices 788t, can record to three simultaneous drives (albeit with some limitations).