Non playing .WMA file

[ibraybrooke]

Hi,
A .wma file that was recorded at a meeting, was deleted by mistake. We have used some data recovery software and recovered the file 84MB but it will not play. I have tried a couple of WMA repair tools on it but with no luck. Can anyone suggest anything?

Many thanks

[Baldrick]

You can try open it with an audio editor like goldwave.

Or try run it through asfbinwin, add the wma and make a new one. Or maybe it's only for asf/wmv video....

[ibraybrooke]

Hi Baldrick

Many thanks for your advice, the Goldwave does open the file but only plays static / noise. Not sure how to use the other program.

regards

Ian

[Baldrick]

I doubt asfbinwin will work....so I'm out of ideas.

[jagabo]

It's likely you "recovered" 84 MB of junk, not the actual audio data. Or at least critical parts of the file are not present so programs are not able to determine the codec and properties of the audio. What you might try doing is pasting (with a hex editor) the header from a known good WMA file with similar properties over the header of (a copy of) the messed up file. That may let you recover some of the audio.

[jman98]

When you delete a file, that space is marked as available to be reused. Eventually that space will be reused and something will overwrite it. If you aren't telling us that, for example, the file got deleted and it took 2 weeks before you tried to recover it, then it is possible that various parts of the file were overwritten and you can't get it back. Explaining how some parts of the area that held the file could be overwritten but not all parts is probably more technical than you want to know about. Please note that my example of 2 weeks was not at all meant to be some kind of accurate measuring number where you can say "We only waited 13 days to recover the file and 13 days is less than 14 days so why aren't we good?" When you delete any file, all that space IMMEDIATELY becomes available to be reused and it can be used at any time. This is why the longer you wait after deleting to try to recover and the more you do on the PC where you deleted the file, the greater the chance is that you can't recover it.

If you guys really cannot live without the accidental mistake then you can pay an experienced data recovery firm to try to recover it for you. They MAY have better luck or may not be able to do any better than you did, but it will be expensive to find out. Again, if you just cannot live without this, gambling a thousand or more pounds may be something your company is willing to do.