PT uses Backup drive audio instead of project drive

[Gabe S.]

Hi.

(I've submitted a tech ticket, but figured I'd ask here.)

I have a backup drive that clones my project drive every night. I use SuperDuper to Smart Update the drive so the backup drive is an exact match of the project drive. Once this backup has been done, a strange issue appears when I am working on the project again the next day. If the backup drive is mounted, when I launch a session on the project drive, ProTools will use the audio in the Audio Files folder on the BACKUP drive instead of the audio in the Audio Files folder on the project drive.

How do I know this? Quite often I'll find problems like pops and clicks or other noises in audio files. The flow of work that I use is to go to the Audio Files folder on the project drive, open the offending audio file in Izotope RX, fix the audio problem, save the file, close the Pro Tools session and then re-open it. Once the Pro Tools session re-opens, it recognizes the changes to the file and I move on. However, after my backup system was in place (which is an SSD in a BlackMagic Designs box), I encountered a problem. After going through my normal steps to fix an audio issue like a click/pop in the recording, I re-opened the Pro Tools session and the click/pop was still there. When I checked the file in the Audio Files folder on the project drive, the click/pop was not there. I was like, wuuuuuut? I discovered that Pro Tools was looking at the backup drive for the audio. I was for sure using the Pro Tools session file that was on the project drive. I couldn't seem to force Pro Tools to look at the project drive Audio Files folder, so I quit Pro Tools and unmounted the Backup drive. Once I relaunched Pro Tools and opened the session, it looked in the correct place for the audio files and the audio I had fixed was now being used in the session.

This happens all the time. So, now I can't have my backup drive mounted while I work on Pro Tools......the danger being that sometimes I don't remember to re-mount the backup drive at the end of the day and the audio/sessions don't get backed up that night. Not good.

I have a 28-core Mac Pro running 10.15.2. Pro Tools Ultimate 2020.9.

Anyone else see anything like this?

Cheers.
-gabe

[Sonopolis]

Strange, what does the Disk Allocation window say?

[musicman691]

Should never run with a backup drive mounted or even powered on all the time. That's why they're called backup drives - so that when things go south you have an independent way of recovering.

[Darryl Ramm]

Several things maybe don’t seem great here. Backups left mounted, they should be unmounted as Jack said, or even better maybe physically detached (less chance of an electrical hit, maybe less chance of theft or building loss). And it sounds like there is only one backup, if so that is a recipe for disaster. A likely time for your primary drive to fail is while you are backing it up... now you may have a messed up source drive/files and a messed up backup drive/files. You should be rotating through a sequence of backup drives. Including having some physical copies off site or in the cloud.

But the most likely cause of data loss nowadays is not drive failure or software bugs but human error, and the chance of that is greatly exacerbated by leaving backups mounted on the source system.

I am not sure how helpful Avid support will be here. Pro Tools should not just relink files so I would be looking very carefully at what is going on. Making sure files are actually where you think they are, there are no session files or directories that are symbolic links etc. That all the drives on the system are actually mounted on directories you expect them to be (that one can really throw a curve ball) etc. etc. And the easiest way to pick up content files from the wrong drive is to actually be opening the session file on that drive. Double check you are not doing that. Are all the sessions clean with all content in the session directory? If not then clean that up now.

Close cases of behavior I have seen like this happen when people have in the past import content off the backup drive without copying.. they may not even realize they are... they run import and don’t notice the source drive... now some content is only actually on the backup drive and never really gets backed up again. And then maybe they copy that session session again or do a Save In... so maybe that new sessions content is or is not where you expect. It does not sound like that exactly is happening here but it is very easy to mess stuff up like I described... and another very good reason not to leave backups mounted online

Many more folks here run Carbon Copy Cloner than SuperDuper, so not sure how much insight related to that you might get here. I assume your signature is correct and you are on Catalina and not Big Sur. Is the drive you are cloning APFS? And you are cloning to APFS? Are there any errors in the SuperDuper log files? You say project drive so to be clear it is not the boot drive? I would maybe be testing running sessions off some spare space on the boot drive or cloning or manually copying session folders to a scratch space on the backup drive to see if that helps debug what is going on, including renaming/moving the source folder... do all this with test copies. I expect you will need to sort this out yourself more than Avid support will be able to help.

[Gabe S.]

Really appreciate the feedback. I've been launching sessions this AM with the backup drive mounted and.....sigh....it's working fine at the moment....of course, right?

I have BackBlaze online backup as another backup.

Files are definitely where I think they are. And the sessions are where they are supposed to be. I've been using PT since 1998, so I have my procedures down which I adhere to.

Sessions are super clean. I start from a Stationary Pad template session. I copy the files I want into the Audio Files folder and then import them into there session using File-->Import>Audio. (My files are all stereo and PT always seems to split them unless I bring in files this way.)

Yes, my project drive is its own drive. It's a 4TB NVME drive on a PCI card.

The audio files don't exist on the backup drive before it's imported into the session. The audio exists on another drive that is a production drive. The production drive is another 4TB NVME drive on a PCI card. Again, I do these kinds of things to be redundant---making sure that things are copied into an Audio Files folder before they end up in ProTools.

Yes, I'm on 10.15.2 Catalina. Thinking about going to 10.15.7 and getting the latest PT. I hate upgrading OSes. Something always breaks......

The Project drive is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the back up drive is APFS. Wonder if that's an issue.

Anyway, I'll keep digging. Thanks again.

[Rich Breen]

1. Backup drives should only be mounted when backing up (personally, I use TinkerTool to suppress mounting backup drives at startup and a script to mount them and run the backups at EOD).

2. Always a good idea to keep an eye on Disk Allocation.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Gabe S.

Yes, I'm on 10.15.2 Catalina. Thinking about going to 10.15.7 and getting the latest PT. I hate upgrading OSes. Something always breaks......

The most important question here is HOW have you installed your Catalina? PT needs a clean install, meaning emptying your storage and installing from zero to hero, not using any migration or restore apps anywhere but doing it all manually.

[Top Jimmy]

Originally Posted by Gabe S.

Anyway, I'll keep digging. Thanks again.

One way your issue can happen that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is copying the session and working on the copy while leaving the original file paths intact. Perhaps you created the session on the backup drive unintentionally and when you realized it, you copied the session folder over to the main drive thinking that was all that was necessary. The problem is, if the original paths and allocation are still valid, that’s where everything goes even when opening the copy on a different drive. Pro Tools only defaults to the local folder if it sees the allocation in the session is invalid