Have i lost my voice recording?

[Android Central Question]

I have a samsung galaxy s4 and did a recording of 40 mins worth. My phone restarted randomly on its own. My phone switched back on and i looked for the recording on the list and it wasnt there. It was like it didnt exist. I looked on my files, my sd card and the lost.dir folder and i cant find it. Is there any way of recovering it or have i lost it forever. I really do hope not.

 

[mustang7757]

Do you have the SD card set as internal storage? I'll leave a link to register so you can communicate here , as a guest account you can't.https://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=409154

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! If it restarted before you finished the recording, then it's most likely lost. You could try looking in a LOST.DIR folder, either on Internal Storage or an SD card, and see if there are any large files there that correspond with when you were recording. If you find one, then edit the filename by adding .mp4 at the end, and see if it plays.

 

[Rukbat]

You could try looking in a LOST.DIR folder

LOST.DIR is for system files found during boot, not for data files.

 

[anon(10614692)]

This recording would have been in RAM so on reset it would have disappeared. As it was not written to memory, there is nothing to recover

 

[B. Diddy]

LOST.DIR is for system files found during boot, not for data files.

Oh, I thought that "broken" files might also make their way to that folder, like videos that weren't finalized (like mentioned here: http://www.rescuedigitalmedia.com/recover-files-from-lost-dir-sd-card. Just ignore how it's clearly shilling for data recovery software).

 

[Opalfruit69]

Ok thanks, but i did an experiment and did a video recording which lasted 30 secs. I restarted phone ahd there it was... saved in my videos. Why has that been saved and not my voice recording?

 

[anon(10614692)]

Where did you find it? Did it have a file name?

 

[Opalfruit69]

I found the video in my videos that i did an experiment but i havent found my voice recording that im desparate for it to be found.

 

[anon(10614692)]

Did it have a file name that you gave it?
Also please give step by step details of how you conducted the experiment

 

[Opalfruit69]

First of all, i took a video recording then i restarted the phone without saving it just to see what it does. Phone restarted again looked in my videos file and it had been saved.
But... when i did my voice recording, the phone restarted itself before i could save it. I thought of automatically save but cant find the voice recording anywhere.
What gets me is why can the video recording save when the phone restarts but a voice recording doent? The voice recording only has a voice recording number. Wanted to save it but restarted before i could do that which is very annoying as i didnt do anything wrong.

 

[anon(10614692)]

If you start recording and stop before shutting down the device it should save. If you shut record and shuts down before the recording ends, nothing has been written to memory that can be recovered. It is possible the video app may close before shutdown saving data which means the same could be said for audio..

Sorry we couldn't help you further.

 

[Rukbat]

Oh, I thought that "broken" files might also make their way to that folder, like videos that weren't finalized (like mentioned here: How To Recover Deleted Media Files From LOST.Dir on External SD Card.

Nothing in there about "videos that weren't finalized". If you're streaming video to storage, there will be a partial "file" streamed, and if the phone gets restarted during the recording, what happens depends on the app. If it was allocating space as it needed it, there will be allocated space not associated with a file, and that can be recovered (but not with their software - PhotoRec would do that kind of recovery). But if the video is in RAM when the phone restarted, it will be gone. In neither case will it be "recovered" to LOST.DIR

"Broken" files, those that are corrupted, are just not what the app that's trying to open them expects. Rename an .mp4 file to .mp3, and open it in a file manager, and you have a broken file. It's not a sound file, even though "mp3" says it should be. As far as he file system is concerned, there's nothing wring with a file like that. It really starts where the directory says it does, it really exists in all the inodes (or clusters in exFAT) that the table says it does, it's the size the directory says it is ... it's just that the app that should be able to open it can't.

Files that end up in LOST.DIR are usually 2 types - when the phone glitches and you suddenly lose a lot of files, they may end up there - with sequential numbers for names. Or if you remove the SD card before all files have been written to it - files in the process of being written aren't complete. Either the last inode or two isn't written, or the directory entry isn't finished - something is still left to be done. A file in that state may become a "lost" file.

Contrary to all the articles, files being readwon't cause that. When they say "read/write state", read "being written". Reading a file doesn't change anything.

 

[Rukbat]

If you start recording and stop before shutting down the device it should save. If you shut record and shuts down before the recording ends, nothing has been written to memory that can be recovered. It is possible the video app may close before shutdown saving data which means the same could be said for audio..

If the app saves block by block, as the audio or video is being recorded, and keeps the directory in sync with the file, shutting sown in the middle may mean losing the last few seconds. If the app keeps the data in RAM until the recording is complete, there's no file to "recover" when the phone shuts down. It's up to the app. (And with apps that record phone calls, they now record your voice, not the incoming voice - the API to grab the incoming voice no longer does anything - Google turned it off because of laws in various places. So all you get is a recording of your own voice. There's nothing wrong with the app or the recording. Android just no longer records the other person's voice. Period.)

 

[Opalfruit69]

Rukbat its not the video i want its the audio recording, there is nothing in lost.dir folder. The app is voice recorder not a call recorder on samsung galaxy s4.