Project 90% complete deleted.

[Wawili_Sound]

Hi All

I am currently working on a project that just going through sign off period about 10k worth of work. I had some corruptions so selected tracks and exported those to a new session. Now I had used up most of my space on my scratch disk so went to free up by deleting the original project folders. I have done a couple of days work since on another project so hopefully not all the files have been written over. This morning I opened the project to find 4000 files missing. I literally feel sick, I am using the ashampoo undeleter at the moment waiting on that and hopefully be able to re link those files.

Can someone please help me understand what has happened here. I understood that when creating a new session from selected tracks it reconciles the session and audio files into one location. Is this not the case, I will need to understand this better for the purposes of delivering sessions to major contractor etc... I cant be giving them half a project or project without the audio files.

[amagras]

My guess is your new session was reading the files from the old session. You have to use Save Copy In and tick Items To Copy: Audio Files instead of using Save As.

[Darryl Ramm]

Where are your backups? Do they have the files in them?

Amagras is right, sounds like you did not copy content into the new session.

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by amagras

You have to use Save Copy In and tick Items To Copy: Audio Files instead of using Save As.

Yes, both of these must be done to create an entirely self contained "new version".

Restore from your backup and hopefully you won't have to redo much work.

[Wawili_Sound]

Hi All

I need your help to recover this session, The files have now undeleted and I will need to re link. The undeleted files are coming up as .wav but workspace does not see them as audio under kind. Now there is 4000 files, I also can not play these files in explorer via quicktime or vlc how ever they seem to be displaying correct file size, file name and length. It does not seem to relink even when pointing to the files.

[Wawili_Sound]

Hi no backup of session unfortunetly, the only other copies was the original session that I wiped. Seems as though for what ever reason I had not checked copy files. All my other sessions are backed up I dont know why this one is not.

Ok seems as protools does not see or recognise the files that have been undeleted. Does anyone have any advice on windows and undeleted files??

[Darryl Ramm]

If the undeleted files will not play in any player then they have not been successfully recovered and may not be able to be, especially if your filesystem was near full/being written to after you deleted those files.

If this was valuable you should *not* have tried recovering stuff yourself unless you really know what you are doing. And ideally then only attempt recovery on a cloned image of the drive made using low-level tools. If this is valuable and you are willing to spend money on it look for a disk recovery company, ideally locally who you can talk to about the chance of getting anything back.

No backup... it is quite possible you have lost all those files. You *have* to back up your work... in multiple ways/stored in multiple places.


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[Extreme Mixing]

This is no help to you now. I know that. But I never delete files. Never. You can pick up a 6 TB drive for under $150. That's several years of work for most of us. Why throw anything away? Just don't do it. $10,0000 of work is gone now. You have to back it up to get it back.

Steve

[Samanthas Dream]

I don’t think this helps necessarily the original poster, but over the years, I’ve become very anal-retentive, in keeping multi levels of back ups. The only thing my advice can do, is for those looking at this particular thread, and emphasizing the importance of proper file management, as well as multiple layers of backups is intricate to what we do.

I personally keep five levels of back ups. Both internal and X ternal.

[zedhed]

Originally Posted by Wawili_Sound

Hi no backup of session unfortunetly, the only other copies was the original session that I wiped. Seems as though for what ever reason I had not checked copy files. All my other sessions are backed up I dont know why this one is not.

Ok seems as protools does not see or recognise the files that have been undeleted. Does anyone have any advice on windows and undeleted files??

PT isn't seeing the files because they are not 'associated' with the session. By not checking the copy audio files to new session option, the only files PT will see are the ones created within the new session.

If you had kept the old session file (or backup of it) you could re-link audio files in workspace, providing they have been successfully recovered from deletion. I would look to see if at least the session file/s have been recovered and try to run them to see if the re-link option is feasible.

Again, not much help to you but a lesson learned I'm sure (I've done it myself). I now copy the whole session folder to numerous locations during and once recording audio is complete. Then put backups aside and work on original session. I also never delete original audio files.

As Darryl said, seek professional advice on recovering files, but expect that prospect to be expensive.

Best of luck in sorting this out.