Zoom H2n "Invalid Files" - problem and a solution
 

I had my Zoom H2n on a shoot last week for a sales training seminar shoot. It was about 10 hours of record time. I was handing off the equipment to a couple staffers who were going to hit record and forget it. The training went fine. The H2n testing went fine. The record and playback was fine. There was a 32gb class 10 Delkin Devices 163X SDHC card in the Zoom H2n. I formatted the card in the recorder the night before.

When I picked up the equipment and offloaded the SDHC card I was able to play back the couple initial recordings that I did while testing. The files the staffers recorded would not play. They would not play in the Zoom H2n or on the computer. Nothing would open them on a Win10 machine. Audition, QT, Windows media. Nothing. There were three files on the card between 1gb and 2gb so I knew the recorder had gone for hours. At 48khz 16 bit stereo the card was good for 45 hours and there were 35 hours remaining, so I knew what was on the card was approximitely correct.

I recorded a new file on the card. It played back fine. When I went back to the three files they played just fine! I offloaded the card to the Win10 computer. I imported into Premiere CC and the three files are fine now.

What I think happened is somehow, the files had corrupted headers or something and when I recorded more the recorder looked at everything on the card and ran a process to repair them.

The software version on the H2n is Version 1.0. I haven't tried to look to see if there is a later version.

So that's my problem and a solution.

Re: Zoom H2n "Invalid Files" - problem and a solution
 

Machine shutdown (due to sudden loss of power) is common and does not write the needed metadata. If the extension is changed to <.raw>, audio applications such as Sound Forge 'Pro' can often open and re-save it properly. I think Audacity will as well.. not sure about Audition.
Sometimes file recovery software is needed if no files are showing. The 'files' have cryptic names, so search by date/time if that's the case. I've also encountered files that were too corrupted and could not be salvaged at all.