Recover TDMS Data with Diadem 11.0 and Labview 8.6

[Mpetrie]

I have a Labview 8.6 VI that generates a TDMS file containing 5 channels of force data.  I have not had any issues with the VI until today when 4 out of the 30 TDMS files I generated were not able to be loaded into Diadem 11.0.  I got an stating Diadem could not impoart all channels or channel data from this data source.  The other 26 TDMS files loaded fine and was able to run one of my VB scripts on the data set with no problems.  The TDMS Repair Tool requires at least Labview 2009 to be installed.  Is there any way to recover the data from the 4 files, or is there a different tool I can try, all of the previous suggestions I read on the various posts were not successful in providing an operational solution.  Any additional suggestions or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike

I have added an attachment of the error dialog box and one of the TDMS files.

[YongqingYe]

Hi Mike,

I could reproduce the error as you attached in the screenshot. We are working on trying to recover the files.

I'm a little curious, do you mean you installed both LV 8.6 and DIAdem 11.0 on the same machine? Could you please check and let me know the version of tdms.dll (usually here: C:\Program Files\National Instruments\Shared\TDMS and right click it to get the version like 2.a.b.c)? And you mentioned TDMS Repair Tool, which tool you are using, do you have the detail information of this tool?

And, do you have a simple VI in LabVIEW 8.6 to reproduce the corrupted TDMS file?

Thank you.

[Mpetrie]

Sorry if I was a little too vague on my first post.  I do have Labview 8.6.1 and Diadem 11.0 installed on the computer which generated the TDMS file.  After completing all collection tasks (30 in total) I then attempted to run a Diadem VB script to process the data and that is when I first got an error regarding the TDMS files.  I have check the error logs the VI generates, and no errors were recorded at the time when the TDMS files were generated.. 

The current TDMS.dll version installed is 2.2.1328.581. 

The TDMS Repair Tool I tried was found at this site: http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/DD94C6858DE6FBA4862577FB0065B231?OpenDocument and was recommended from this thread: http://forums.ni.com/t5/DIAdem/Recovering-TDMS-files-with-DIAdem-Connectivity-Library/m-p/1632502/hi....  When I ran the tool however, I got an error stating that I needed Labview 2009 or above.

The VI Application that I use to generate the TDMS files is a 20-30 VI project.  I have been using it for about 4 months and have not had any errors in generating and then post-processing the TDMS files.  To date after the four corrupted TDMS files yesterday, I have not been able to generate additional TDMS files with errors.  I will be testing the Labview Application all day today, to see if I can generate any errors and attempt to determine why or how the files got corrupted.  The TDMS files that were corrupted were found at random points during the data collection process.   Out of the 30 files the 13th, 16th, 26th, and 29th files were the only files corrupted. 

I you need any additional information that would lead to a solution, let me know.

Thanks,

Mike

[Brad_Turpin]

Hi Mike,

Please make sure you are executing "TDMS Close.vi" before sending the resulting TDMS file to a new location (such as ftp from RT to host computer).

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments

[Mpetrie]

Brad -

Currently I am using the DAQmx Data Logging VI to acquire several voltage channels and create the TDMS file too.  While checking the code, I did find that there was one case that may result in the DAQmx task not getting stopped or cleared.  So I have modified that part of my Labview Application.  It appears that these odd conditions may have been what caused the seemily random error to corrupt the TDMS files. 

Hopefully will be running the system all day today and looking for any problems.  Out of curiosity, is there a chance the corrupted TDMS files can be at least partially retrieved, and would having a non-corrupted TDMS file with the same type of data be of any value for you guys?

Thanks,

Mike

[Brad_Turpin]

Hi Mike,

There is a pretty good chance that R&D can reconstruct a broken TDMS file.  If all that's amiss is that the file was never closed, then they just need to tweak the next-to-last binary header to state that the file is over and ignore the dangling fragment.

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer

National Instruments

[Mpetrie]

Is there anything I can do to correct that error, with the Labview and Diadem version I have?

Mike

[Brad_Turpin]

Hi Mike,

You could take a look with the all-G-code TDMS API to see if they will expose the binary header information on each section, but I don't know how to do this, i'm just guessing.  I've actually never used those VIs myself.

Do you have a lot of these wounded files?

Brad Turpin

DIAdem Product Support Engineer

National Instruments

[Mpetrie]

After setting aside this particular project for the past few months, I came back to this as recently a few more files that were generated in Labview became corrupted.  I know that the TDMS files are getting closed properly before the Labview application closes, so I am at a loss as to why the files are now getting corrupted.  I did notice, that any file over about 27-28,000 KB seems to be corrupted but no files below that size have been corrupted.  Is there a limit to the TDMS file sizeLabview 8.6's can generate?

Also, here is a copy of one of the corrupted files, is there a chance someone could look at it and see if the data could be retrieved.  All attempts made at creating an API to get the data have failed, as the TDMS Open subVI generates an exception error.

Thanks,

Mike Petrie

[Perry_S]

Hi Mpetrie,

We are looking into retrieving the data and will let you know what we find as soon as possible. We are also looking into some tools that you might be able to use to retrieve the data yourself. 

Regards,

Perry S.