Pro Tools did NOT save my hard work nor did Session Back up

[Nightflight]

Hi

Pro Tools did NOT save my hard work nor did Session Back up. I have session back set to every minute on top of it. On a Mac - Catalina 10.15.2

Talk about being pissed off!

Ive been looking to see if pro tools somehow started saving my session on another drive but I CANT find this anywhere.


Anyone have this happen to them before? And did you end up finding your last session?

Thanks

[WorldStudios]

The other day I could not find my session files from the day before and none of the automatic backups either. I searched and did not find them until I discovered them in the “VST plugins folder”!! I have no idea how they came to end up there. I guess I might have installed some plugin during that day, but...

It has not happened before and not since. So, try a search that includes your system files as well!

[Nightflight]

Originally Posted by WorldStudios

The other day I could not find my session files from the day before and none of the automatic backups either. I searched and did not find them until I discovered them in the “VST plugins folder”!! I have no idea how they came to end up there. I guess I might have installed some plugin during that day, but...

It has not happened before and not since. So, try a search that includes your system files as well!

Thank you for trying to help me.

I search my VST folders nothing. Im on a Mac so you know.

I have tried a system file search. It was the 1st thing I did. Not too mention I have a habit of manually saving every 5 minutes or so, sometimes less. I can not believe all my hard work gone.

[Nightflight]

Originally Posted by WorldStudios

The other day I could not find my session files from the day before and none of the automatic backups either. I searched and did not find them until I discovered them in the “VST plugins folder”!! I have no idea how they came to end up there. I guess I might have installed some plugin during that day, but...

It has not happened before and not since. So, try a search that includes your system files as well!

I just replied to you and it did not post?

[Darryl Ramm]

Hi welcome to DUC.

To find every .ptx session file on every drive on your Mac, do a manual find search without relying on the vagaries of spotlight. In Terminal type:

$ sudo find / -name '*\.ptx' -print

Magically disappearing sessions are most likely caused by user mistakes, start by excluding those. Like maybe you had a removable drive or network share mounted and accidentally opened or saved a session there. That drive volume may no longer be mounted. It might be on a local disk that is no longer mounted... make sure any local disks or network shares that should be do show up as mounted. I've heard of folks even recording accidentally to removable SD cards. Or if there was a chance some drives were not mounted and should gave been when you were recoding then unmount them and make sure you don't have the mounted volume over the top of a directory containing session folders written there while the drive was unmounted... not usually easy to do on a Mac, but possible. The find command above will not find those files with mounted drives hiding them. If all that is greek ask for help after you try what you can.

And always look in the trash. (but the find command above will find those)

Oh and another possible mistake nowadays is creating a cloud project when you meant to create a session. I've seen it done. Personally the only thing I would do with that stuff is uninstall Pro Tools cloud services after each Pro Tools install.

Its super hard to believe Pro Tools will delete all the session files... but in case it did you can also use find to search for the session folder name or name of any content files. Or just search under drives or directory paths that should not have wav or aiff files in them for files with those file extensions.

[Nightflight]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Hi welcome to DUC.

To find every .ptx session file on every drive on your Mac, do a manual find search without relying on the vagaries of spotlight. In Terminal type:

$ sudo find / -name '*\.ptx' -print

Magically disappearing sessions are most likely caused by user mistakes, start by excluding those. Like maybe you had a removable drive or network share mounted and accidentally opened or saved a session there. That drive volume may no longer be mounted. It might be on a local disk that is no longer mounted... make sure any local disks or network shares that should be do show up as mounted. I've heard of folks even recording accidentally to removable SD cards. Or if there was a chance some drives were not mounted and should gave been when you were recoding then unmount them and make sure you don't have the mounted volume over the top of a directory containing session folders written there while the drive was unmounted... not usually easy to do on a Mac, but possible. The find command above will not find those files with mounted drives hiding them. If all that is greek ask for help after you try what you can.

And always look in the trash.

Oh and another possible mistake nowadays is creating a cloud project when you meant to create a session. I've seen it done. Personally the only thing I would do with that stuff is uninstall Pro Tools cloud services after each Pro Tools install.

Its super hard to believe Pro Tools will delete all the session files... but in case it did you can also use find to search for the session folder name or name of any content files. Or just search under drives or directory paths that should not have wav or aiff files in them for files with those file extensions.

Hi

Thank you for taking this time to try and help me.

I never use pro tools cloud service, I don't trust it. Also I don't know how to even create a cloud session. If I did by accident that's news to me. But it did cross my ind on it being in the club. Now I wish it was in the cloud rot retrieve.

Yes I have session on external HD like I was taught from my beginnings. Yes at times the external drive with unmount but I always know when it does.

I don't know where else to search. Ive typed in the title in the search bar. I get every session but from where I did hours of extra work.

I have 3 hard drives in computer. So far I cant find it anywhere in thee other 3 drives.

Any other thoughts?

[cwsand]

Originally Posted by Nightflight

Yes I have session on external HD like I was taught from my beginnings. Yes at times the external drive with unmount but I always know when it does.

I don't know where else to search. Ive typed in the title in the search bar. I get every session but from where I did hours of extra work.

I have 3 hard drives in computer. So far I cant find it anywhere in thee other 3 drives.

Any other thoughts?

Was this a brand new session, or one that already existed and you just reopened it? Does it open if you go to the Open Recent selection on the File menu? Other than what Darryl said, I don't know what would have happened. Pro Tools has always saved my work to the session file in the session folder unless I choose Save As or Save Copy In. If it was a new session, you could try creating another new session to see where Pro Tools defaults to saving a new session - maybe it's there.

[Rich Breen]

Or use EasyFind.


This sounds a lot like someone accidentally working off a backup drive - the worst is if someone unknowingly works off a backup drive and then backs up overwriting everything they've done - I have mounting suppressed on all my backup drives, and my backup scripts automatically mount them at the end of the day to prevent just this scenario.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Nightflight

Hi

Thank you for taking this time to try and help me.

I never use pro tools cloud service, I don't trust it. Also I don't know how to even create a cloud session. If I did by accident that's news to me. But it did cross my ind on it being in the club. Now I wish it was in the cloud rot retrieve.

Yes I have session on external HD like I was taught from my beginnings. Yes at times the external drive with unmount but I always know when it does.

I don't know where else to search. Ive typed in the title in the search bar. I get every session but from where I did hours of extra work.

I have 3 hard drives in computer. So far I cant find it anywhere in thee other 3 drives.

Any other thoughts?

I suggested a whole lot of stuff to you. Did you do any of that?

Did that find command find anything?

Did you check all other removable media that might have been mounted?

Did you unmount/eject all external drives and look under those mount points? Or just unmount all those drives and rerun the find command.

The open (cloud) Project should be obvious when Pro Tools is asking you wether you want to open/create a session/project dialog. See if there is a cloud project there.

And as Rich has asked what exactly did you do? Double click on a session, open an existing session from Pro Tools?, try to create a new Session? Try to do a Save As? Try to do a Save In? etc.

With modern Macs with fast PCIe/NVMe drives, the best performing location to work on sessions is likely that internal boot drive, if you have space. Its also likely more reliable and less error prone than using external drives.

[JFreak]

Losing a session is always user error. Even if PT lost contact with one single audio file, the playback would stop and you would be notified there is a problem with storage.