[Brendan James]

Hi, logging in my first time to update those experiencing the same problem with the DR-40 and possibly other audio recorders. I was able to recover my audio from an EXTREMELY important interview after dropping my recorder at the end before pressing stop. The screen read “File Write Error – press enter” and I was left with 0kb files. I thought I was hosed.
Steps I took to recover my file:

1.) Download imageUSB.exe (https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html)

2.) Create image of the entire drive *bin file – for my 32gig drive this took about 30min

3.) Import the bin file in Audacity as raw data

4.) Settings I used for my Tascam DR-40 (recording at 24bit mono)

Encoding: Signed 24-Bit
Byte order: Little-endian
Channels: 1 (or whatever you recorded)
Start offset: 1 bytes (*important)

5.) I imported a small percentage of the file (2%) just to test the settings then changed it to 100%

6.) what you are basically getting is the full data dump from the audio recorder with everything on the card. Because I formatted the card before my last session my 58min interview was right there at the top of the 30gb file! Your audio might be burred in there somewhere.

7.) Select section you want to recover and export to a new wave file.

8.) pour yourself a drink

I hope this helps someone get out of a bind like I did! I was freaking out .. next time I will get an XLR Y and record a backup to one of the cameras just in case! phew!