Missing Files
 

I was cleaning up three sessions getting rid of unused tracks to archive the projects to DVD's. I consolidated all the tracks (each session) hit remove unused tracks and all was good. I even played back each session to make sure I was good. No problems. The following day I reopened all three sessions and got a missing 144 tracks error message for each session. All the missing files are from the same audio folder. I tried to relink through ID only and name and ID and nothing. I tried to recover the files using Mac Keepers utility but found it doesn't support recovering AIFF files(How does a Mac utility program not support AIFF files???) I did back up all the sessions to another drive. Is there a recovery program anyone could suggest to try and restore these files back into the audio folder? Any suggestions? What's my options?

Re: Missing Files
 

Can anyone help? Thank you in advance

Re: Missing Files
 

You got a backup or the session from before doing this? To that other drive... so the pre-consolidated files are there right? Carefully copy that session somewhere else and try again on it. Do not destroy the only copy you may have by being careless. Even better make a DVD backup of that session before doing anything destructive anywhere.

All the partitions you are working on are HFS+ aka Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format right?

Did you have other drives attached when you were doing this and since removed (or just not powered on?).

Do you know the names of some of the files. Try searching for them across all drives (using Spotlight or find command in a terminal window).

Re: Missing Files
 

GREAT news. Plugged in the back up drive and Pro Tools relinked the files on all three sessions. Then I dragged these files into the sessions audio folders on the main drive and skipped the duplicates. I'm good to go. I'm so glad I backed up the project to the back up drive. Saved my bacon. Thanks so much for your response.

Re: Missing Files
 

I'm suspicious it was running off those other files all the time. You've got to be super careful what media files are being actually used. Great you had that separate drive.

Re: Missing Files
 

The back up drive was not hooked up and sitting on a shelf. I must have done something wrong in deleting the unused files in the session???? Like I said. After cleaning the sessions of unused files. The sessions played back perfectly. Weird.....

Re: Missing Files
 

OK. I have my files back in each session. The session loads and the missing files window pops up and there's no audio files shown in the regions bin. All the tracks are showing in the edit window. When I hit Skip all, the files load in the regions bin. So, the session tracks are shown in the edit window, the regions bin is empty until I hit skip and the files load in the regions bin. What's up with that? How do I fix this? BTW, These 3 sessions are in one Folder. They share one audio files folder. Is this reason for missing files in my first post? Should each session have it's own audio files folder?

Re: Missing Files
 

Ideally, each session would be its own folder(each with its own Audio Files folder) and all could live inside a master folder for the artist/project. I have often had files I import NOT get saved in the proper folder, even though I have preferences set to "Automatically Copy on Import", so now I actually drag or copy audio files INTO the session folder, or actually drop them into the Audio Files folder and import from there. I suspect its a small bug that doesn't hit enough people to get attention(and a fix):o

Ultimately, you can go to File>Save Session Copy, check the box to include audio files and save this copy session to any drive. Doing this will insure that all the audio related to that session WILL be copied to this new copy, regardless of where the audio was sourced from.