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Old 11-05-2019, 11:03 AM   #1
karbomusic
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Default If a Serial Storage Device drops during recording, Reaper doesn't know it = data loss

[REPRO STEPS]

1. Create a project.
2. Set the record path so that the media is written to an external serial device aka USB drive.
3. Begin recording a track.
4. Once the track is recording, unplug the USB cable (to replicate what occurs if the connection drops on it's own for various reasons).

Expected behavior: Reaper throws an error or otherwise informs the user that the media has failed etc.

Actual behavior: Reaper continues "recording" as if nothing is wrong though the file is no longer accessible. Reaper could record for hours with the user assuming everything is OK.


[DETAILS]

See this post/thread...

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...1&postcount=33

It appears that while recording is in progress, if the serial drive/device inadvertently blips or disappears after record is pressed, Reaper either doesn't see or ignores the fact that the storage media no longer exists and continues to report to the user that everything is just fine and that the recording is still occurring - but it isn't...



It appears there are a couple of possibilities...

1. Being External the OS (Win) uses IRP_MJ_WRITE, when the drive is no longer present, the return value switches to FILE INVALID and Reaper isn't actually informed that the write failed, possibly due to caching/lazy writes.

2. The same as above but Reaper is informed and it is a missed case.

In all cases, IF Reaper can detect this, it probably should because someone theoretically can (and actually has per other thread), record for hours thinking everything is fine when in reality no data is being written to disk. It's also possible it went somewhere else (memory/page et al), but too much work to investigate further when the devs likely already know the answer.

Can the devs look into this and comment? We are a little concerned with risk of users losing hours of recording since Reaper doesn't give any clues that something went wrong. Even if recording external USB media is a bad idea, would be nice to know if Reaper can detect this.

Confirmed on Windows and Mac (and linux based on clepsydrae's reply below).
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Old 11-05-2019, 11:10 AM   #2
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Just confirmed on linux, too. Same behavior: recording appears to continue without issue.
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Old 11-09-2019, 10:12 AM   #3
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Bumping since I added repro steps to the first post.
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Old 12-20-2019, 11:36 AM   #4
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Bump!
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Old 12-21-2019, 03:13 AM   #5
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Bumping also this serious topic.

Devs, please?
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Old 01-06-2020, 08:46 AM   #6
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bump.
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Old 01-06-2020, 11:45 PM   #7
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Thanks for posting this. One more thing for my OCD to worry about during recording sessions. A solution to this would definitely add peace of mind and potentially avert disaster.
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Old 01-16-2020, 12:23 PM   #8
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Default Hey Devs...

Bumping hoping for a dev comment - I'm pretty resilient myself, but since someone could run in record for hours and lose every minute of that audio without warning, seems important for chiming in.
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Old 01-16-2020, 12:54 PM   #9
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Similar thing happens when rendering to a disk that becomes full. Reaper just keeps on rendering, when the graceful thing would be to stop rendering and inform the user that something went astray.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=221562
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=120185
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Old 01-17-2020, 09:15 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabian View Post
Similar thing happens when rendering to a disk that becomes full. Reaper just keeps on rendering, when the graceful thing would be to stop rendering and inform the user that something went astray.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=221562
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=120185
YES :-(

So another bump. Please...
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Old 02-19-2020, 06:26 PM   #11
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Bump - cuz data loss - thanks!
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Old 02-29-2020, 07:47 AM   #12
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Another bump
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Old 06-11-2020, 08:27 PM   #13
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Bump, due to potential data loss - thank you!
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Old 06-12-2020, 07:49 AM   #14
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Bumperony
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Old 06-12-2020, 07:52 AM   #15
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I would add, that Reaper seems to have issues as well, with recording to a volume that's full.
So if you run out of space, Reaper keeps on recording without writing it, as there's no space available anymore.
This could cause broken recording-files.
Maybe that is linked to the problem above, that Reaper does not check if writing itself is possible at all.
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Old 06-12-2020, 07:55 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Meo-Ada Mespotine View Post
I would add, that Reaper seems to have issues as well, with recording to a volume that's full.
Just an FYI there is a setting to warn you if the disk has less than the amount of space you configure but I'm not sure it is enabled by default?

Edit: it is enabled by default @ 1GB.
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Old 06-12-2020, 09:36 AM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Just an FYI there is a setting to warn you if the disk has less than the amount of space you configure but I'm not sure it is enabled by default?

Edit: it is enabled by default @ 1GB.
But question is if it checks for the space only at the moment of starting recording..?

I mean, if Reaper finds you have e.g. 1.2GB free space at the time of pressing REC button, so everything is OK, but few minutes later something is triggered in OS or other app and making a big file download, backup, tempfile or whatsoever, then Reaper does not check periodically if there is still some free space (while still performing recording task, or rendering task, or any file saving task in general!!!). Too bad then. It happens with rendering, too
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Old 06-12-2020, 09:53 AM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by akademie View Post
But question is if it checks for the space only at the moment of starting recording..?
Correct, but once recording has started, I assumed trapping the failed return value would still fall under this bug?
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Old 06-12-2020, 10:09 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Correct, but once recording has started, I assumed trapping the failed return value would still fall under this bug?
Yes, I would say.
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Old 06-12-2020, 10:17 AM   #20
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Some discussion on disk space cases here...

IMO we could really use options:

[x] alert when disk fills up while recording
[x] alert on recording stop if disk filled while recording
[x] do not create zero-length items if recording to full disk
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Old 06-12-2020, 10:44 AM   #21
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Quote:
Originally Posted by clepsydrae View Post
Some discussion on disk space cases here...

IMO we could really use options:

[x] alert when disk fills up while recording
[x] alert on recording stop if disk filled while recording
[x] do not create zero-length items if recording to full disk
I don't see any reason for these to be options. This is just part of graceful exit/degradation. When would anyone not have those turned on?

It is amazing to me that the devs, as great programmens as they apparently are, let this slip by. Could there be some technical reason for not checking the return code of a write operation and gracefully terminate the writing if the write fails?
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Old 06-12-2020, 10:57 AM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabian View Post
It is amazing to me that the devs, as great programmens as they apparently are, let this slip by. Could there be some technical reason for not checking the return code of a write operation and gracefully terminate the writing if the write fails?
Not unless the API call that Reaper calls doesn't return the failure, but based on the procmon in my first post it does at that lower level and I'd expect that to bubble up - but I don't know the Reaper code and there could be another call, that reaper makes that I can't see, which is likely... so there could be other reasons but if so...

A dev comment would be nice so we could inform others, workaround whathaveyou.

There is another investigatory action I could take to help answer, maybe later if I have time.
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Old 06-12-2020, 11:01 AM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fabian View Post
When would anyone not have those turned on?
Yeah that probably makes more sense. I think I was just being conservative in case devs or users didn't want the pop-ups.

Quote:
Could there be some technical reason for not checking the return code of a write operation and gracefully terminate the writing if the write fails?
If it's not just an oversight or something not-yet-implemented, then my only guess is that the philosophy is in the vein of "professional tools let the user hang themselves if they want; let the user handle their own business without nagging them about stuff". But seems more likely that it's just that "warn if disk space < X" is enough to cover most cases so the others haven't been dealt with.

Given the stakes (e.g. lost data) I do hope these features (and the bugs mentioned in this thread) can get implemented/fixed some day soon.
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Old 06-12-2020, 11:04 AM   #24
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Quote:
Originally Posted by clepsydrae View Post

If it's not just an oversight or something not-yet-implemented, then my only guess is that the philosophy is in the vein of "professional tools let the user hang themselves if they want; let the user handle their own business without nagging them about stuff". But seems more likely that it's just that "warn if disk space < X" is enough to cover most cases so the others haven't been dealt with.
I agree likely a missed case, especially since it falls out of the testing most would think of doing while testing in a dev environment. Actually, most of the debugging I do in the real world, is catching things people don't think to test when running test cases on code - then customers hit it.
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Old 06-12-2020, 11:18 AM   #25
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We should definitely notify, I agree, this is overdue. We'll be adding this in the next cycle (with an option to stop audio processing if this occurs in order to draw attention to the issue).
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Old 06-12-2020, 11:23 AM   #26
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Awesome, thanks!
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Old 06-12-2020, 12:16 PM   #27
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Yip, Yip, Yippieeeee.

Thanks Justin!


Edit: Once a pre-release build lands, someone let me know if I miss so I can add (fixed) to the title.
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Old 06-12-2020, 12:17 PM   #28
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Nice, thanx.
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Old 06-12-2020, 12:56 PM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin View Post
We should definitely notify, I agree, this is overdue. We'll be adding this in the next cycle (with an option to stop audio processing if this occurs in order to draw attention to the issue).
Great!
Thanks.
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Old 06-12-2020, 03:12 PM   #30
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Awesome!
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Old 06-19-2020, 02:07 PM   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by karbomusic View Post
Yip, Yip, Yippieeeee.

Thanks Justin!


Edit: Once a pre-release build lands, someone let me know if I miss so I can add (fixed) to the title.
It is now added.
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