So before the last minor firmware update, i was out having some ice cream with my fiance. She is whacky and always mades videos entertaining lol so i took some. BTW i did do a "backup" before the firmware update but it doesn't seem to backup any of that stuff, what the hell is the backup app for anyway?

So anyway, i was transferring/viewing the video again and it somehow has been altered or snipped into a shorter length! How the hell does that happen?

Also i am not dreaming this, the video was close to 1:30 long and not it is about 1:00. I know SPECIFICALLY that this happened because she was talking about something and then altered what she was saying because i video'd it and that isn't there anymore. We even watched it in the ice cream shop and it was fine.

I didn't notice this until today when i went to watch/transfer it.

Can anyone help? I did re-name the file while it was on the device but that shouldn't matter. Is there a place in the file system where there might be another version cached that i can grab?

Also this is a serious issue, maybe it's a fluke i don't know but how does my video get smaller/shorter?

sometimes the file became currupted. try check it on the computer

i did, same length on computer. also one other video seems to have been snipped too but only maybe one second but this one is somewhere between 20-30.

i guess the lesson is to either do not rename the file on the device or backup images and videos yourself since backup app doesnt.

We may need to see the actual files to do data forensic on it...

lol is that your way of wanting to see my fiance on video? haha

if i sent you the file would you be able to do any of that?

anyone? i'd like to have my whole video back

jim,

The backup application doesn't backup videos because those are supposed to be located in your home folder (the big 32GB partition). This partition is completely unaffected during software updates, so there is no point in backing-up 32GB worth of data every time you do a software update.

The back-up feature is more to take care of your software sources (repositories), configurations (wifi passwords) and installed applications (not sure about this one). This is also well documented in the wiki, I'd recommend a bit of reading.

Now, with regards to the loss of parts of your video, I'm afraid there's not much we can do to help. If it's not file corruption and simply the media player not being able to read further than a specific length, and the data is actually missing, then that's that.

If however the data is there, but just in a "hard-to-get" format, then sure, maybe someone would be able to get it back for you.

@jim: lol
but seriously, which part of the video was cut off?

If the missing part is at the end of the video, then it could've happened due to corruption. Depending on how that happened, the raw data could still be there.

If the missing part is in front; then that's rather baffling to me. Because a corruption at the start of the file (header area) afaik is quite fatal to media files and that would make them unplayable at all.

@ysss

it is the end of the video.

@crashanddie

thank you for the detailed explanation, that makes sense.

If this video is so important to you. Then you should image the flash drive while in mass storage mode so that the data is safely backed up before any further damage is done to the missing part of the clip. I'm not sure what image program will work with flash drives. I've tried WinHex hex editor to make a binary file of the flash drive. It works but a sector by sector copy is very slow. Since the n900's flash drive is fat32. Cloning the drive to another drive would allow you to dig deep into the file system to see where the damage was done and possibly find that missing part of the clip. Fixing a broken file is easy if the file isn't fragmented and hasn't been overwritten.