Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Is it possible to UN-FORMAT the red-drive?

V

Victor Trichkov

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 26, 2008
Messages
76
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Sofia, Bulgaria
Website
www.cinemotion.bg
Hi,
accidentally I formated the RED-Drive, which had the information of our last shooting day (worth about 150 000 Eu). Is there any way to un-format the drive. Please help if it is possible ASAP. Hoping for a miracle.... Thanks

Victor
 
There are programs like Data Recovery Wizard that can retrieve deleted files, including files from a formatted hard drive.
 
Drew Mazanec said:
There are programs like Data Recovery Wizard that can retrieve deleted files, including files from a formatted hard drive.
Click to expand...

Thank you Drew, but as far as I know the red-drive is actually two drives striped in RAID 0 configuration. And I am not sure what operating system it uses. It is not PC or MAC based. I think those un-delete programs you are refering me are only for PC/MAC system. Please anybody else knows more about the specifics of the RED-Drive. Thanks

Victor
 
I'm very new to the Red system, and the drives.. but if they are mountable on either Mac or PC then they are likely formatted Fat32.. which is an old funky/clunky system btw.. but is the only one that can be mounted Mac/PC without additional software...

I should add.. should not matter if RAID 0 or a single drive.. it should mount and look like a single drive to the OS.

~S
 
I heard at a RED Seminar that the RED Drive uses fat32 file system. Also, the camera itself runs an OS based on Linux.

Assuming it is FAT32 then you should be able to use PC based recovery tools. Generally, the act of "formatting" does not overwrite all the data. It just lays down basic info so that the OS can put files on the drive (that is unless you did a format and erase). So your data prob. was not totally wiped out.

You do not want to keep formatting. As each format is going to loose data.

Now if the footage is really worth that much then at worst case you could prob. go to a data recovery center. They can get info off even if the entire drive has been written too several times. This is because it takes 5 or more total overwrites to totally wipe out the data. This might potentially destroy the drive by the way. But if its worth that much I guess its worth it :)

If I were you I would do the following:

1. Verify with RED that the drive is fat32. (If you cannot reach them one way to check might be to take another RED drive. Mount it on your PC and then get info about the drive. That should tell you what kind of file system is there.

2. Try to use a PC based utility on the drive to see if files can be recovered. (I don't think the Mac utilities will support fat32). Usually these utilities have a read only mode where they will just report how likely it is that you can recover the files.

3. If none of that works get RED support and potentially go to a Data Recovery Center.

Hope this all helps. And, good luck.
 
If the footage is worth as much as you say it is go to a data recovery center. Don't even try to recover it yourself.
If the drive has only been formatted once there is a good chance it is recoverable if done professionally.

Good Luck!
 
Ed Watkins said:
If the footage is worth as much as you say it is go to a data recovery center. Don't even try to recover it yourself.
If the drive has only been formatted once there is a good chance it is recoverable if done professionally.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks to everybody for the suggestions. The problem is that there is nobody in RED headquarters and after 7 hours we are starting the next shooting day. There are two more shooting days and there is only one red-drive. I know that if I use it and write data on it the chances are getting smaller to recover anything. Thats the reason why I will try a format recovery software. Any recommendations? Thanks again!
 
I would not even consider using that drive tomorrow. It is currently a rather expensive drive. I would do as Ed says and get that to a proper data recovery house.

Yes user based software should recover it fine providing you haven't played too much with the drive - but you're dealing with some expensive data, and it's probably not your money?

Shoot CF cards tomorrow.
 
Drives are FAT32 formatted. They are a RAID-0, but that is handled internally, external systems see them as a single drive unit.

What Ed says is the best course of action. Have professional drive recovery services take a look at it. Call RED, see if they have any suggestions on who to send it to. You are definitely not the first person to do this and it's possible that RED has knowledge of data being recovered in this situation.

If you do feel compelled to try on your own, I wish you luck... I recommend connecting the drive and making a byte-for-byte image of the drive before you do anything else. Back up this image file and set the drive somewhere safe where it won't get used for anything else. Try various data recovery methods on copies of the drive image file. Often, data recovery software will write to a drive volume during recovery operations and if one software does not work, this can damage data making it impossible for other softwares to attempt.

Something to consider for the future:

Offload regularly, even if you have plenty of room on your drive. You don't need to delete data from the drive, and I recommend you not delete anything until you have multiple copies made after the shoot. Keep offloading new material ever so often so you're generating redundant copies throughout your shoot.
 
Victor023 said:
Thanks to everybody for the suggestions. The problem is that there is nobody in RED headquarters and after 7 hours we are starting the next shooting day. There are two more shooting days and there is only one red-drive. I know that if I use it and write data on it the chances are getting smaller to recover anything. Thats the reason why I will try a format recovery software. Any recommendations? Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Email myself (deanan) and Brent please.
 
Actually most of us are at RED HQ right now ... Deanan will take care of you. :)
 
How did it go with your disk in the end? Is there any conclusion as to what software tool works best - I've just done the same as the original poster...
 
I can't add much here, as you read already, the best is to leave it to the pros.
Contact RED and ask them what your next step should be.

But keep in mind the principle of backup DURING shots.
For RED DRIVE shooting you should of course have a 2nd one.
Each 20min of footage shot you should stop using it and back it up, as a rule.
This is easier to be done with CF cards. Less backup time. Less $ to have a 2nd one.
If you have a MAC there are tools listed in the forum for backing up using security, checksum checking, MD5....
Always back up in at least two different drives, check if the data is OK, only then erase the original source drive/CF card.
You should always have a DIT / Data Wrangler in every important shot.
If the shot if not important, there's no need to back up!
If the shot is just lacking funding then, that's why the RED is so nice looking -
we can get a friend to come by and help us with DIT (in a bankruptet indie kind of way)

Cheers and good luck retrieving the data
 
Just wanted to point out that R3D Data Manager can handle the checksumming and multiple copies all at once. With just a couple of clicks you can automatically copy the data to up to 4 destinations and verify that the data was copied correctly to each destination. Mac version right now, windows version coming soon.
 
The FAT file system is easy to recover if the files are in a subdirectory, but much more difficult to recover if they are in the root directory since all the directory information is overwritten for any files in the root directory. Does the Red put its files in a subdirectory? I would think that it might, since the root directory in FAT has a hard-coded limit on the number of files it can hold, something around 512 files. If that's the case, you should have no problem recovering all of those files.

Data recovery programs like Get Data Back for FAT by Runtime Software scan the disk looking for FAT directory signatures (Single dot at offset 0 and double dot at offset 32 at the top of a cluster) and then loads those values into a recovery tree. If the files aren't fragmented, that's all you need to recover the files complete. The directory entry only has 32 bits for the file length, which is why file sizes are limited in FAT.

However, files that were in the root directory can only be recovered through a signature search. There was a thread earlier regarding establishing reliable signatures for the beginning and ending sectors of r3d files, but I don't know if it's gone any further since then.

Have you had any success in recovering the data?
 
Thank you all for your suggestions!
Unfortunately I've not yet been able to retrieve the data. I've tried Data Rescue 2, but it sees the R3D files as loads of .gz archives - which isn't helpful.

I've also tried sending a support query to RED, but all I get is a message saying the webserver is busy (tried since yesterday 2pm GMT +1)
 
helgeloken said:
Thank you all for your suggestions!
Unfortunately I've not yet been able to retrieve the data. I've tried Data Rescue 2, but it sees the R3D files as loads of .gz archives - which isn't helpful.

I've also tried sending a support query to RED, but all I get is a message saying the webserver is busy (tried since yesterday 2pm GMT +1)
Click to expand...

email me (d e a n a n - a t - r e d)
 
I suggest find the Professional File Recover technician,
they are most experiencing on the data recover, don't try too recover by yourself, otherwise you got trouble.

Wish good luck
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top