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Old 04-11-2015, 10:07 AM   #9
serr
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Join Date: Sep 2010
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When recording with Reaper, the blank files are written as step 1. Then as audio is recorded, the I/O buffer of data is written to the open file(s) with an EOF mark every time.

The WAV header portion of the file is updated with the correct file size when the recording stops. However, the files are still complete valid files that report their size correctly to the Finder (OSX).

Normally the fallout from this would be a valid file but with 'corrupt' header info. Some audio apps would just look at the header and stop there. Reaper actually will ignore invalid headers when there is data there.


That's what is supposed to happen.

You had some hardware crash with the drive that resulted in it NOT reporting an error to OSX and basically acting like it was running but it was just being a black hole.

I saw something like this happen a dozen or so years ago. I was probably running Digital Performer v3. A power supply in an external drive started to fail and basically the drive power cycled during use. This somehow was able to happen without OSX getting an unexpected device removal error. Possibly something like the 12v supply failing but the 5v supply for the logic still live the whole time. So the system kept running and the data I/O was just going through the motions. No data was saved.

I'm sorry. This is shitty news for you! But that's what it looks like just happened to you. I'd replace the power supply in that external drive box.

The Reaper crash would have been it trying to access those files (it was told were still there and being written to by the drive the whole time) to update the header info at the end of the recording. Drive didn't respond as expected so - beach ball. Files weren't there so - Reaper error message.
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