Help!! Lost files on SRS journals

[o'corragain]

Hello,

When this question was posted "DOes anyone know the throat distance for j kenna set", I went to look it up on my SRS Vol 1 and found that particular folder #1 "An Early Set of Irish Pipes" was missing.

I checked the rest of the files on that CD and they were all there.

I then checked my SRS Vol 2 and found two folders missing, #5 - "A Robertson Pastoral Set" and #12 - "The National Museum of Ireland Collection".

Anyone else have this happen?

Could some kind soul email me the files I am missing?

Cheers. David

[Jumper]

Anyone else have this happen?

You're using a Mac, right?

This also happened to me, with exactly the same folders "missing."

I solved the problem by taking the disc to a neighbor's house, mounting the discs in turn on his Windows machine, and dumping the files to a memory stick. Then I was able to move them to my Mac, where everything is now visible and accessible.

Clumsy, but it works.

[o'corragain]

Hi

You're using a Mac, right?

No. I am using a PC.

I know I had the files originally and since I have replaced my computer in the last six months, maybe there is an issue there?

Are these particular files in a different format than the rest of them?

Cheers, David

[jon1908]

Are you using Vista? I had the same problem with my copy of Vol 2. when I tried to view it on my desktop running Vista.

On my old laptop running XP all the files are there!

Good old Microsoft. No wonder I'm saving for a Mac.

Jon

[Jumper]

Hi

You're using a Mac, right?

No. I am using a PC.

I know I had the files originally and since I have replaced my computer in the last six months, maybe there is an issue there?

Strangely, I just tried the original discs again on my Mac (now running OSX 10.4.11, for any lurkers concerned), and all of the files now appear. However, in Sept. 2005, when I first got the discs, this was not the case. I don't recall what OS I was using then, but it's the same CPU and disc drive. I contacted NPU (from whom I purchased the set) at the time, and the best they could do for me was to send out a freshly-burned pair of discs, which behaved exactly the same as the originals.
Hopefully the SRS Journal Volume 3 discs will be better-behaved. Assuming there is a volume 3...

[billh]

The problem, in this case anyway, is not the discs. It's the inconsistent extensions to the ISO-9660 format which the various operating system manufacturers use - they can't even keep them consistent across releases, let alone agree among themselves!

Of course using plain-vanilla ISO-9660 *ought* to solve the problem (assuming the OS's are compliant with the international standard, <cough>) - however that would raise complaints that the directory names were cryptic and/or too short. Unfortunately the CD creating/burning software out there does not make it easy to create a standards-compliant disc.

[o'corragain]

Jon wrote:

Are you using Vista? I had the same problem with my copy of Vol 2. when I tried to view it on my desktop running Vista.

On my old laptop running XP all the files are there!

I have Vista now and and I'm not sure what OS I opened them with originally, but it wasn't Vista, so I tried to view the CD's on a friend's computer with XP, but I still couldn't view the same three folders.

Bill H wrote:

......It's the inconsistent extensions to the ISO-9660 format which the various operating system manufacturers use - they can't even keep them consistent across releases,........

How come it doesn't affect all the files on the CD?

Cheers David

[billh]

The 'extensions' to ISO-9660 allow things like filenames longer than 8 characters, lowercase letters, non-alphabetic characters such as blank spaces, and paths longer than 32 characters. Different flavors of extension, different uses of those extensions, and different degrees of tolerance for non-compliant usage account for the problems.

Mac and PC initially embraced different approaches to extending ISO-9660; of course, over time, they attempted to be "compatible" with each other, so that one OS could read a disc written on another; meanwhile, each OS tended to 'enhance' its handling of file names in ways incompatible with the previous "standards". In the end the result is a rat's nest of inconsistent and ambiguous usage. Microsoft in particular seems incapable of adhering to a standard or implementing a standards-compliant reader.

It only affects some files - probably different files depending on what OS and version you use - because only a subset of the files use or abuse the extensions in a particular way; to put it simply, it depends on the names of the files and directories.

For instance, some paths are longer than 32 characters, some paths have non-alphabetic characters in names, some may contain non-ASCII characters (i.e. accents), etc. Depending on the software used to burn the discs, and the settings used in the software package, these exceptions will be "encoded" in different ways... Some of these extended uses can be read by your software (but maybe not your neighbor's!) and others can't, because software varies in its permissiveness or strictness in interpreting the standard(s). In this context, often a change which "fixes" one problem causes another, so the problems bounce around from version to version.

Bill

[o'corragain]

You are a wealth of information Bill.

Now all I have to do is figure out what OS I used originally and hopefully find someone who still uses it, or keep trying the CD's on every computer that I can until I find one that works.

If I eventually can access them on another computer, can I then modify the files so that I can view them with Vista?

Cheers, David

[billh]

If you successfully copy the directory structure to hard disk, the problem should go away. Subsequent releases of your OS, and even different OS's, should continue to be able to access the files[*].

(Similar issues with naming apply to your hard disk, but the manufacturers have more incentive to fix them. While the OS manufacturer hopes you'll blame the CD if your updated OS can't read it, it's much harder to shift the blame if the files on your hard disk disappear! )

[*] provided your OS can still read the "obsolete" Word and Excel files... the PDFs should stay readable for many years however. Word and Excel are certainly not archival formats...

[Cathy Wilde]

Bill rules.

[o'corragain]

Thanks to everyone who responded, I will continue the search for that elusive OS that will open my files and report back when I get lucky.

Cheers, David