Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

teixido

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 12, 2010
2
0
UPDATE: Using iPhone Backup Extractor I could find a .mov (why .mov you ask? I HAVE NO CLUE) inside an old backup from July 13, 2009 SO NEEDLESS TO SAY I'M THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD right now. It's 6:16a and it was a looooong night but definitively worth it. Thank you Teej!

Here's the thing. My dad passed away on July 2009. Before getting into coma I taped our very last conversation with him. Needless to say this is BY FAR the most important piece of data I would ever, EVER have.

I have no idea how this was corrupted, I really don't. I have time machine, I have iphone backups, and on every single piece of backup I have, the file is corrupted. The last time I listened to this record was 1 month after he passed away (August) and I decided not to play it up until today where I really needed to hear his voice — a year since he passed away.

Imagine my surprise when I got the generic audio icon, and iTunes wouldn't play it, my iPhone wouldn't play it, nor Quicktime or VLC.

I have NO idea what happened, I just need help to recover this file. Is there any way I can edit it with a HEX editor? Or a company that would offer m4a file recovery? I don't mind paying for it, I would really really like to hear my old man lasts words again.

Thank you and sorry for the "debbie-downer" tone.

Here's the file in case anyone would like to give it a shot:

http://teixidohq.com/sandbox/20090626 220255.m4a
 
Sorry mate, I tried opening it in Songbird, VLC, Fission, Wave Editor and Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery (also works on M4A) and no results. Hopefully someone else can suggest something.
 
Hi Teixido,

So glad to hear that you had a backup and were able to recover it.

Cheers.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.