[murihikukid]

4 months ago I had a hard drive "meltdown"...To cut a long story short
a Data Recovery Company recovered two hard drives as best they could and wrote them to DVD disks....My main concern were my music transcription files that I had worked years on...These are *.tef files the extension for Tabledit ..a music software similar to Sibelius,Finale etc......the size of each is small ie 5 - 30kb......

The Data recovery had considerable success but my main files are sill missing.....but are they ...I am finding tef files "inside" all sorts of other files ..
I found many headings inside a video mpg file by opening the file by wordpad...

BUT how to I extract them back into a tef file?

To give a sample of what I am finding.. please look at the attached text ..it is a small segment from an mpg that contains a tef file...the tef file starts at < I Am The Ride and ends with .38 > before and after I presume is mpg ? language .....

So the tef file is there ...I have isolated the tef language trying to have Tabledit recognise it ..but without success..

I would sincerely appreciate any ideas on how to go about recovering these ...

Thanks Ron New Zealand

[C.Ingram]

I can't view the file properly, but if you can come up with some sort of simple pattern to signify the start and end of the files, some relatively simple code shold be able to extract the files.

[murihikukid]

Christopher ..Many thanks for your reply.....I have done a screen grab zipped it ,and attached it...Far better than text as this truly represents a tef file as seen by wordpad...
Naturally I have opened good files and taken note of the characteristics in wordpad...
You will see in the gif that I have Marked in brackets the start and end of the file .....
Obviously I have used a very small file for this sample....

I hope the gif can allow you to offer me a way out here .....These tef files represent music transcriptions that I have developed over years and I know I should have had them backed up but sadly I have learnt my lesson...

Thanks Ron NZ

[C.Ingram]

Is the .38 of any importance? To all tef files have similar endings?

[murihikukid]

Christopher ...Apparantly so..I have checked a lot of files and most have it at the end....When I say most ....I have seen the odd one with <.38 Standard Tuning>

I will check 20- 30 more good files just to ensure I am giving you the true facts..

I made things hard by not filling in the file "Title Information" when I did a transcription...and just naming the file and saving......As regards I AM The Ride..I did actually type the title in the proper place within Tabledit itself so its easily identifiable.....I Now realise that if one does not do this all files have an automated heading "TablEdited by Ron Jenkins" (because Tabledit is registered to me) ..... Most of the files that disappeared throughout the drives ...I failed to fill in the Title Information Panel within Tabledit itself..
This short sightedness on my part of course means that I have to recover all info under the heading "TablEdited by Ron Jenkins" play each one to actually find out their title.....Another lesson learnt ..I hope you understand what I mean here...

I will email Tabledit and ask about the end as apparantly its important....

Thanks Ron..

[murihikukid]

Christopher..Further to the above I have just checked aprox 90 files ..
80 out of 90 had .38 as the ending but there were aprox 10 that had these endings...

.38Acoustic Guitar
.38Guitar Open G
.38Guitar Standard
.38Guitar low D
.38Guitar Open D

The Guitar Open G etc refer to the actual guitar tuning the file is Transcribed in...But there is not a pattern EG every transcription done in open G does not finish with .38Guitar Open G in fact most only have .38....

I have emailed Tabledit and maybe they can explain this...

Regards Ron.

[C.Ingram]

Grab the jEdit text editor at http://jedit.sourceforge.net. Open up files and to a search. Turn on regular expression matching, turn of ignore case, and enter the following expressions:

TablEdited by Ron Jenkins.*?\.38[\w\s]*?

[\w\s]+composed[\w\s]+.*?\.38[\w\s]*?

See if at least one of those matches the majority of the files (check about a half dozen or so). Then check some files which you've seen your transcriptions embedded in, like the one in the image you provided. See if it properly matches against at least most of the content of the data you want.

[murihikukid]

Christopher..Thanks .I will certainly try...In the meantime I have at long last got a reply from Tabledit re a file I sent to them some time ago....
I am afraid I do not really know what me means except for maybe I am wasting mine and other peoples time,,,,....Heres what it says...

__________________________________________________ ____
Hello Ron,

I've carefully looked into your files. Unfortunately I must say there is
nothing to do with them. Not only your FAT got lost but the binary
content has been corrupted. Sorry :-(

I've restored a tef file (rescue.tef) by merging your files with a
binary editor and realigning the beginning of the file.

It doesn't work because the internal addresses are corrupted.

Do you have something more "genuine"?>>>>>
__________________________________________________ ___

He has attached a file (rescue. tef) and as he says it does not work...
So basicly I am in you hands ..... Is there any chance of success in your opinion?

Regards Ron.

[murihikukid]

Christopher ..I hope I am not abusing your time or the forum.....I did originally send Hard Drives to a Data Recovery company and the Tef files they recovered are all 64kb......I presume as they start at the header but go on far past the end ..I will send attached on an appendage reply.... ...

Now if I left click on a recovered tef file it opens Tabledit but I get ??(See the Screen Shot attached)....
Now if I open the folder via the folder Icon in the top right corner and browse to the same file and click on it .....The file opens and plays....so I can actually then copy/pasre and make a completely new file without the other stuff in it..

Ron

[murihikukid]

Christopher..Please find attached the tef file as received from the recovery company...Ron.