[SOLVED] Recovering Corrupted Multitrack SD Files on CQ Series (Defective Card Reader / FAT32 Error) / [RESUELTO] Archivos corruptos en CQ-20B

CQ CQ Troubleshooting
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Hello everyone! I’m Antonio from Audia Studio. I want to share a recent nightmare I had with a multitrack recording on my CQ-20B and the incredibly simple solution we found. I hope this saves another sound engineer from a panic attack.

The Scenario: I recorded a live show (18 channels) directly to an SD card using my CQ-20B. The console did a flawless job. The problem happened back at the studio: I used a faulty SD card reader that kept disconnecting and reconnecting from my Windows PC. This power flickering corrupted the FAT32 file system on the SD card. My session folder (CQ-MT011) collapsed into a useless 32 KB file. Over 17 GB of audio simply “vanished”.

What DID NOT work:

  1. Standard Recovery Software (Recuva, EaseUS, etc.): Because the FAT32 index was destroyed, these programs couldn’t piece the files back together properly.

  2. The official A&H WAV Header Recovery Tool: This was the biggest surprise. The tool kept throwing a “0 candidates” error. Why? Because this tool was designed for older consoles (like Qu/SQ) that interleave all channels into one massive file. The new CQ series is smarter: It records pure, individual mono .WAV files for each channel. Since the files weren’t interleaved, the old recovery tool didn’t know what to do with them and ignored them.

The Solution (Step-by-Step): The audio was still perfectly intact on the card, just “orphaned” without a name. Here is how I recovered everything perfectly without any third-party recovery software:

  1. Safety First (Optional but recommended): Create a disk image (.img) of your SD card and mount it as a virtual drive on Windows (using a free tool like OSFMount). This way, you work on a clone and protect the original SD card.

  2. Let Windows do the dirty work: Open the Command Prompt (CMD) as Administrator and run the Check Disk command on your drive (e.g., if your SD/Virtual drive is E:, type: chkdsk E: /f).

  3. Say “Yes”: Windows will find the orphaned data and ask to convert lost chains into files. Press Y (Yes).

  4. Locate the raw files: Windows will put all the recovered data into a hidden folder on your drive called FOUND.000. Inside, you will see files named FILE0000.CHK, FILE0001.CHK, etc.

  5. The Magic Trick: Copy the large files (in my case, they were about 957 MB each) to a new folder on your PC. Because the CQ-20B had already perfectly written the WAV headers before my reader crashed, the files were 100% healthy. Windows just didn’t know their names. Simply rename the file extension from .CHK to .wav.

That’s it! I dragged the newly renamed .wav files into Adobe Audition and the waveforms were perfect, pristine, and ready to mix.

If your CQ multitrack gets corrupted by a bad reader or a sudden power loss, don’t waste time with expensive recovery software. Just use CHKDSK to gather the orphaned blocks and rename them to .wav.

Greetings from Peru!

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