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  #1  
Old 07-17-2010, 09:55 AM
keevhren keevhren is offline
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Default Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

Mac Pro Quad Core running OS X 10.5.8
12 Gigs of ram
Pro Tools HD 2 System running 8.0.1


I'm currently in Boston recording my friends new EP. We're using my Mac Pro and my HD system etc which has been flawless since day one of me using it. I can literally count on one hand how many times Pro Tools has quit on me unexpectedly and there have been no other bugs at all. So day one up here my system drive crashed... pain in the ass for sure but I've still got apple care so they replaced it and I just had to reinstall pro tools to get things back up and running.

My Mac Pro has 4 Internal Hard Drives: 1 - System Drive, 2 - Back up of my System Drive, 3 - Audio, 4 - Backup of my Audio, and I back up to an external 1TB drive at the end of every night.

So since getting the replacement drive put in things have been fairly smooth, things seem to be running a tad slower than they were originally but all in all it's been fairly fine. Pro Tools has been crashing about 2 times a day on average but backups are set for every minute so it's been easy to remedy.

However, this morning when we came down to start comping guitar tracks from yesterday and everything we've done over the last two days is gone... like, literally no where to be found on any of my hard drives and the latest backup files for Pro Tools in any of the sessions we've been working on are saying Wednesday.... so essentially my computer thinks that we haven't used pro tools for 3 days. Additionally, ALL of the audio from the past 3 days is gone... like straight up as if it never happened and when I open the sessions it's like how they were as of Wednesday. The clicks I printed Thursday to start comping drums are not there, guitars from the past two days aren't there, it's seriously mind boggling what could have happened... plus it's the same on every drive (internal and external).

Any ideas? We're not paying for studio time as we're doing it ourselves so that's not too big a deal, it's just like a "what the [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] happened to all of the audio from the last combined 30 hours of tracking?" I could understand that like maybe a pro tools session file got mixed up and didn't recognize the audio or have it imported, but the problem is that the audio is straight up non-existent on any hard drive and at 1am this morning when we stopped working everything was there and fine... we even neglected to back up to my external but mounting that and it's the exact same way... as if nothing's changed since Wednesday.

Any Ideas? We're pretty much under the assumption to just start over and to go from there but if you have any other ideas it would be much appreciated. I've used spotlight to search all the drives for audio and havent found a single thing. There are three of us mainly doing all of the Pro Tools editing (myself and another engineer, plus the producer/keyboard player in the band) and we're all audio school trained etc and have been using pro tools for a long time and none of us have ever heard of something like this happening... googling hasn't garnered any results either.

Any help would be much appreciated.
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  #2  
Old 07-17-2010, 11:07 AM
strangeLoop strangeLoop is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

Quote:
Originally Posted by keevhren View Post
Mac Pro Quad Core running OS X 10.5.8
12 Gigs of ram
Pro Tools HD 2 System running 8.0.1

My Mac Pro has 4 Internal Hard Drives: 1 - System Drive, 2 - Back up of my System Drive, 3 - Audio, 4 - Backup of my Audio, and I back up to an external 1TB drive at the end of every night.
I suspect that the "Backup of my system drive" is the problem. Can you boot from that backup drive?

Could you have been booted from the system backup drive and not realize it?

If audio is on drive 3, where are the session files kept?

Do you check your disk allocation at the start of each new session?

If you listened back to what you recorded, then that audio has to be somewhere.
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Old 07-17-2010, 11:52 AM
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crizdee crizdee is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

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Originally Posted by strangeLoop View Post
Could you have been booted from the system backup drive and not realize it?
That was my first thought as well!!

seems to much information has gone for this to be data loss or hard drive failure.

So the sessions you were playing the night before, are the regions still in the session and blank or are the sessions totally without any of the regions?


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Old 07-17-2010, 11:56 AM
formfunction formfunction is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

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Originally Posted by strangeLoop View Post
I suspect that the "Backup of my system drive" is the problem.
Yes, this certainly sounds like pilot error, either in the above circumstance, or disk allocation. There IS an audio folder somewhere with your tracking. either that or one of your skilled buds is "having a go" with you. ff
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Old 07-17-2010, 12:03 PM
flommer flommer is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

Enable spotlight for all drives then let it complete indexing.

Do a search by date modified (or date created) and the file type. Or session name, that might point you to the folder.

If this leads you to the correct folder somewhere, then turn spotlight indexing off again.
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  #6  
Old 07-17-2010, 12:04 PM
formfunction formfunction is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

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Originally Posted by keevhren View Post
I've used spotlight to search all the drives for audio and havent found a single thing.
Use your workspace browser, and sort according to date.

Worst case scenario is that you replaced your most recent sessions with the original ones. This is the danger of using Finder to drag backups here and there. (assuming that is how you backup) IF that is your situation, you are hosed I am afraid.
scenario.... you recorded to audio drive, copy to backup drive. later you open the session and start recording, not realizing that you are sending your audio to the "backup drive" (disk allocation problem, or opening from the backup drive possibly)... after you are finished, you drag what you thought was the session that you were working with onto the "backup drive".. it asks you "... "do you want to replace....". You click yes...oooops, and you would not realize it till today, and all you have are the sessions/audio from Wed. This is just one of a couple of scenarios that I can think of that would put you in this position.
Rail might be able to save you though... ff
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Old 07-17-2010, 12:30 PM
keevhren keevhren is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

I found another thread on here from last October that seems to be the same problem but with no solution... http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=257304

I was/am definitely booting from my main system drive so that's not the issue and I've indexed all files through spotlight and have not found the files... there were definitely some things mixed up (some drum files from one session were in another's audio folder) which is quite odd. We have everything set up and the allocations for all files are pretty meticulously organized so that nothing gets lost. It is literally as if certain files up and disappeared randomly. A friend told me that it may have to do with a buggy OS and to try re-installing so we are going to take that step next.

Same thing with in the Workspace, sorted according to date and there are just chunks of audio files missing.

As far as backing up, I use Silverkeeper to run backups and have it that no files on the backup drive are erased/overwritten so it also wasn't a user error of just dragging and dropping from my main to my backup. Things definitely weren't overwritten.

@ Chris, as for the sessions from the night before, it's as if nothing was ever done in them yesterday. No regions or media from our sessions yesterday are in the sessions... so bizarre.

We're just reserving to the fact that the parts are lost and will re-track them... thanks for the help and of course if anyone has any further insight or suggestions they are more than welcome!
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Old 07-17-2010, 12:34 PM
flommer flommer is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

If you open a finder window then you have access to a more capable search in the upper righthand corner. Spotlight indexing needs to be enabled for this to work. It can take a while to index. Make sure no drives are in the spotlight privacy list.

Type in some search term and if it doesn't have any hits then start using the additional search options to try different methods to search them out. You have to click the little + symbol to get at the other options. In the dropdown list (kind) there is an "options..." option with lots of different things to use to search.

Sometimes there are things that by default are not visible to spotlight searches, like system files are by default not included so you have to use the options to turn them on..
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Old 07-17-2010, 05:32 PM
strangeLoop strangeLoop is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

Quote:
Originally Posted by keevhren View Post
as for the sessions from the night before, it's as if nothing was ever done in them yesterday. No regions or media from our sessions yesterday are in the sessions... so bizarre.
You say the the backups don't overwrite anything. Maybe you were unknowingly working from a backed up session file that could still have everything there, and also the backed up session would likely do a strange disk allocation.
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Old 07-17-2010, 05:53 PM
formfunction formfunction is offline
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Default Re: Audio from past two days of recording missing... ideas?

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Originally Posted by keevhren View Post
I found another thread on here from last October that seems to be the same problem but with no solution... http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?t=257304
These still have offline regions in the session though. You are saying that everything is gone, audio regions, backups,... everything; like the last 2 days did not exist.
My guess is that something is FUBAR with your backup process. Particularly if your backups are mirroring your loss. Not sure how or why. Good Luck.

PS, I still thing someone is having a sick joke at your expense, but in saying that I am trying to figure out how I would have pulled it off without leaving a trail of somesort.

Does your webbrowser also show a 2 day "gap".... any other programs that you used during that time show the same ???
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