[Acoustics] StreamPro data lost (?)

[Russ Lotspeich]

Background: We have had a StreamPro in our district for about a year and a 
half now and have used it extensively with no issues.  We purchased the 
long-range mode and section-by-section firmware upgrade in September. 
Since the upgrade was installed, both the firmware in the ADCP (v. 31.04) 
and the software in the PDA (v. 3.20), I have used the StreamPro for about 
10 QM's without incident, until......


The incident:  Yesterday, Nov. 8, we were experiencing some minor flooding 
in our state and I was sent to one of our smaller, flashier sites to make 
a QM with the StreamPro.  The measurement went great, it was the highest 
measurement ever at the site.  From this site, I went to another site in 
the area to make yet another rather high priority measurement.  That is 
when things started going downhill.  As I was ending my sixth pass at this 
site, an error message popped up that said something to the effect of 
"Failed to initialize....file RDInstruments/Project 
Files/..../aquia005r.000 does not exist".  Basically, it said that the raw 
data file for the transect that I had just made did not exist (?).  Having 
never seen that message before, I closed the window and was going to 
attempt to either end it again or just start over with another transect, 
but another window popped up.  It said something to the effect of "Cannot 
initialize instrument, configuration file RDInstruments/Project 
Files/..../aquia000w.000 does not exist."

It was at this point that I had the proverbial sinking feeling in my 
stomach.  I went and opened File Explorer and my entire RDInstruments 
directory was gone!  Now, this directory as well as other directories have 
been stored on the SD card, the same SD card, for the past year and a 
half.  Every directory except the RDInstruments directory (where I store 
all of my StreamPro files) was in tact, but I lost everything under 
RDInstruments.  This included the rather critical data that I had 
collected earlier in the day.

Questions:  My first question is whether anyone else out there has 
experienced this same thing before?  If so, what was the cause and how did 
you deal with it?  Second, if this was just a fluke of which I was the big 
winner, any suggestions as to how to prevent against this same thing in 
the future?  I have followed the book and always stored the data files to 
the SD card, but if anyone is doing something different, I'm all ears. 
Third, does anyone think that this could possibly be an issue with the new 
firmware/software package, especially since only the directory where I was 
storing data was affected?  I am planning on contacting RDI this morning 
to see what they have to say.

Any comments, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.  I want to 
feel like an idiot for losing data in the field, but I just can't think of 
what I could have done differently!

Thanks,
Russ
___________________________________________
R. Russell Lotspeich
Hydrologist 
U.S. Geological Survey
Virginia Water Science Center
office- (804)261-2637
fax- (804)261-2657

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://simon.er.usgs.gov/pipermail/acoustics/attachments/20061109/86dbcce1/attachment.html