Missing Audio Files

[larsongs]

I've got missing Tracks on a Project. I've tried retrieving manually & automatically with no success?? Multiple times. Where did they go?? How do I get them back???

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by larsongs

I've got missing Tracks on a Project. I've tried retrieving manually & automatically with no success?? Multiple times. Where did they go?? How do I get them back?

Almost all cases of missing files are caused by user mistakes, including not having media files in session folders, manually moving those folders and not the linked content, moving or deleting linked content, unintentionally recording content to removable, backup or cloud storage, and especially not understanding the difference between Save, Save As and Save Copy In. Or trying to record to non-supported file systems. If you are not confident you understand all that open up the reference guide and review there.

[Cayce]

WTF is going on with this software?!! I've had numerous occasions lately where I open a project that was fully intact at the close of its last session, only to be greeted with an alert telling me me there are missing audio files, then opens to show NUMEROUS clips missing from tracks, PERMANENTLY DELETED from my system!! They're GONE!!

All of the acoustic guitar tracks I create are recorded in pairs: A DI track, and a Mic track. I opened a project yesterday to find that 12 of the Mic tracks were missing their clips, completely deleted from my system. All the DI tracks were intact. It selectively deleted only those .wav files associated with the Mic tracks. I spent the better part of the day repairing that project.

Last night I began a new project, recording a long acoustic track, again a DI & Mic pair. Saved and closed the project. I opened it just now to find the Mic track missing it's clip. A search showed it completely gone from my system.

Pro Tools is going into my closed projects and deleting .wav files out of the project's Audio Files folder. How is this happening? Any time I delete clips from an open project, I NEVER choose "Move to Trash" or "Delete", but instead choose the default, "Remove", which reads, "Remove selected clips from this session". “THIS SESSION!!” Not "ALL SESSIONS". That's the only clip removal I ever do. So why is Pro Tools Removing files from other projects? Do I need to store all my projects on a barricaded external drive so that when I'm working on one, all the others are out of reach of this DAW?

[junkgear]

Just curious if you are re-naming the clips or just using the name PT assigns to them.

[amagras]

Or allowing PT enough time to close properly

[RyanC]

It sounds like maybe you are opening the same session every time you start something new and then doing a save as and delete (remove) everything?

If so this is very bad practice. I've nearly fired someone for doing this. It intermingles all the audio files for multiple different sessions in one folder and dramatically increases the risk of data loss. Also makes backups very difficult- which you should be doing (time capsule?), as well as archives etc.

If that is the case, make a new session each time. You can save an empty session as a template, or just import session data to get the template with no audio files.

I think it's pretty safe to say that this isn't something PT normally does...there are many thousands of users, and many in situations where loss of files like this would be enormously expensive, that are not having a problem like this.

[albee1952]

Do you mean "project", as in "in the cloud" or "session", as in on your local computer drive?

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by Cayce

... Any time I delete clips from an open project, I NEVER choose "Move to Trash" or "Delete", but instead choose the default, "Remove", which reads, "Remove selected clips from this session". “THIS SESSION!!” Not "ALL SESSIONS". ..

Never seen this happen, and I doubt it's a Pro Tools error, rather seems like something very bad going on with the drives, or user error, but:

a) What version PT? What OS?
b) Have you carefully checked disk allocation on these sessions?
c) Any chance you have a backup drive mounted and you're recording to it by mistake, then backing up over it at the end of the day?
d) Does it *only* happen when you remove clips from a project?

[JFreak]

Help Us Help You document is linked to the forum header -- read it please

[musicman691]

Is PT saving the files to a drive that's gone offline when the session is re-opened? Or maybe saving things to a different drive then the op would think?


Depending on exactly where the op is saving things to if he's first saving to the system drive then I would definitely suspect the Fusion drive to be the culprit.