Crash, .pts vanished

[freed]

hi -

i was just unfortunate enough to have a crash which caused a .pts file to vanish from its folder - it happen to be 40 minutes of music that i've been mixing for about a hundred hours so far, so i feel a little sick to the stomach!!

i've searched the hard-drive and its just not there, i've never had anything like this before.. i was wandering if there was a way i could restore my system to an earlier time? i seem to remember hearing about this somewhere, if i cant i'm gonna lose my job prolly, so unlucky.

if anyone could tell me how to restore my system, everything looks just fine on it, apart from this missing file,

fred

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Depends on if you have Auto-Save enabled in your Pro Tools preferences.

Rail

[freed]

doesnt seem autosave was enabled, i hadnt come accross that in the preferences...

[freed]

i've scanned the disk using recoverit (demo version), and where the .pts file was before is a something with a different file name, a code - BjB35jqTAchaaaGK and no extension...

it looks to me as if its corrupted or something, does anyone have any prior experience or knowledge about a file when that happens? is it lost for good would anyone know? would it be worth me paying for the full version so i can recover that file? im not too keen to pay that much money if the files not going to work, if you see what i mean....

any advice is all appreciated - fred.

[K.B.]

Paying for the full version of what? You're using PTFree? For 40 minutes of music?

I'd say copy the file (to keep the original safe) add .pts to your copy and try to open it. Unlikely to work, but you never know...

[Kris75]

Looks like you just learned one of the most important lessons of Digital Audio.
"If it isn't backed up 3 times, and kept in 3 separate places for storage, YOU DON'T HAVE IT"
Sucks to learn the lesson this way, but hey, ya gotta learn sometime.
Sorry to hear about your luck.
You should do a backup at least once per day.
I usually backup at the end of a particualr take to an open CDR or DVDR at least a consolodated version of the master file that was just finished. This saved my ass at least once. Then at the end of the day, PUT IT ON AT LEAST 2 EXTRA HARD DRIVES, not including the drive your were working on.
If you are using a big expensive room and time is A LOT of money, backup during breaks from the session. You will thank yourself later.
When mixing, once or twice a day I will backup the updated session file and a copy of the session file. You just never know when something crappy is going to happen. It may never happen, or it might happen when you are 100 hours or so into it. It is a lot easier to go back 4 hours than 100.

I wish you the best of luck in your data recovery.

[freed]

thank you kris, you seem to have hit the nail on the head there - there is nothing to do now except start again and wear the shame. i never thought this could happen, well, maybe we'll do it better second time round...