Blue Regions of Death

[mondoaction]

Hi Guys

I'm thinking I'm dead in the water on this but thought I'd check in here.

I have a Mac, running Pro Tools 9 M-Powered.

I save my sessions / files to two external hard drives, "Recording," and "Backup Recording."

The idea was to have an exact copy on each of the drives.

Last night I had been recording and saving to the "Recording" drive.
When I finished for the night, I manually dragged the entire session folder over to the "Backup Recording" drive.

A prompt asked if I wanted to overwrite the existing file. I said yes.

Today when I call up the session off of either hard drive, there are multiple blue regions, missing audio from the session.

I've tried re-linking (manually, auto) and searching my computer / external hard drives for the files and they've vanished.

I'm guessing that some of the audio files existed ONLY on the "Backup Recording" hard drive. When I overwrote the file, these audio files were deleted forever.

Do I have any recourse on retrieving those deleted files? Can my "Back up Recording" external hard drive be manipulated to return to its previous state before the overwrite?

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

[Ben Jenssen]

Since there is no response yet, I'll tell you what I think:
I'm afraid you're screwed.

The files might be there still, but what you did (it sounds like) is that you told mac OSX Finder to consider the sectors on the disk that the files were on, empty and writeable.

The more you use the mac and the disk, the higher the likelyhood that the sectors are overwritten, and the data will be physically lost forever.

I know there are techniques, applications that can "unerase" files (like the police will do with a criminals pc), but my experience with that is a dim memory from the Mac System 7 days.


It can be done, but it depends on how valuable the files are to you, how much writing has been done on the disk, and how lucky you are.

Best of luck.

[mondoaction]

Thanks for the reply Ben.

Per a suggestions, I used Data Rescue 4 and "recovered" many files from my external drive. Just not the ones I need, it seems.

When I'm in Pro Tools and I try to manually re-link the lost file, a pop up says this:

Assertion in "/Volumes/Development/ws.ProTools_MP_9.0.5/AlturaPorts/NewFileLibs/FileFormat/MacBuild/../../FF/Audio/FF_AudioFile.cpp", line 748

Does this mean anything to you?

Best, Chris

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by mondoaction

Thanks for the reply Ben.
Per a suggestions, I used Data Rescue 4 and "recovered" many files from my external drive. Just not the ones I need, it seems.

That seems a bit strange.
Can you see the files in windows explorer?

Originally Posted by mondoaction

When I'm in Pro Tools and I try to manually re-link the lost file, a pop up says this:
Assertion in "/Volumes/Development/ws.ProTools_MP_9.0.5/AlturaPorts/NewFileLibs/FileFormat/MacBuild/../../FF/Audio/FF_AudioFile.cpp", line 748
Does this mean anything to you?

Yes. I have seen this "Assertion error" and "Altura ports" thing on my mac a couple of times, first time as far back as PT v 6 or 8. And lately I've seen people asking about it here on the DUC in PT12 section.

I remember never finding a solution other than some kind of restore from backup or reinstallation.

I'm shure you'll find lots of posts about this error if you search the DUC. Whether you find an answer I don't know. (The regular search function is not very efficient, I suggest googling the forum instead: http://duc.avid.com/forumdisplay.php?f=150. This link can be found in "Additional resources" at the top of these pages.)

I'm sorry I cant help you more.

[mondoaction]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

That seems a bit strange.
Can you see the files in windows explorer?

Yes. I have seen this "Assertion error" and "Altura ports" thing on my mac a couple of times, first time as far back as PT v 6 or 8. And lately I've seen people asking about it here on the DUC in PT12 section.

I remember never finding a solution other than some kind of restore from backup or reinstallation.

I'm shure you'll find lots of posts about this error if you search the DUC. Whether you find an answer I don't know. (The regular search function is not very efficient, I suggest googling the forum instead: http://duc.avid.com/forumdisplay.php?f=150. This link can be found in "Additional resources" at the top of these pages.)

I'm sorry I cant help you more.

I can apparently search all the files recovered, and the ones I'm looking for aren't showing up. Windows? I'm on a Mac...

Thank you for replying! C