disk allocation changed? Files gone!!

[bilug]

Yikes!

I hotswapped my firewire drive and now none of my files are accessable on the external harddrive!!! It asked if I wanted to copy them to another disk, and I did to the computer harddrive, but they still don't work!

Help!

[KingTor]

Slow down: I can imagine the panic you're feeling, but your post didn't make it very clear what happened.

When you say you hot-swapped a firewire drive, do you mean that you unmounted it in the Workspace window (or in the Finder if ProTools wasn't running), or do you mean that you unplugged it and got an error message.

When you say none of the files are accessible on the external hard drive, what exactly do you mean? What are you trying to do within ProTools and what error messages are you seeing?

You internal drive might not be a "qualified" playback volume, so that might be why it didn't work to copy them to that drive.

Can you see the files in the finder? If so, don't panic, there will be a way to get them back into your session.

Even before seeing your answers that that, I'd recommend doing a "Save As..." so that you have a copy of the session as it was and as it now is. Then quit ProTools and Shut Down the machine and then turn off all external drives.

Relax. Breathe a minute. Let the capacitors in your computer and the drives cool off for a minute. Maybe get yourself a beer, if that's an option. (I'm really not trying to be condescending here, but you should never underestimate the value of letting computers cool off and reboot.)

OK. Now turn everything back on. Open the new (Saved As...) session file and see what happens. If ProTools says that there's some missing audio, ask it to find it automatically. If that doesn't work, try the manual relink window and see if you can locate the files and relink them. If that still doesn't work, post back with details on what happened and we'll see what we can do.

[bilug]

Alright...thanks for replying!

I shut everything down and powered back up after a beer (good advice!)

I open protools....then open my session. I get this error message : <<<<Original disk allocation (my external hard drive) for this session cannot be used. One of more drives could not be found or are invalid for this session. As a result, disk allocation has been modified.>>>

I check the allocation and it moves everything to the Mac HD.

The files continue to load and I get this error message : <<<<32 audio files are on a volume unsuitable for playback. Copy to a suitable volume?>>>>

I try to copy them to my external hard drive but says the drive is unsuitable, so I am forced to copy them to the HD.

The session then opens and everything is there...and plays. All fades are there. All edits are there. Everything is normal.

I go to SETUPS>DISK ALLOCATION and the external hard drive is nowhere to be found. I think by plugging in the firewire cable while the computer was on has blown something up in the external hard drive. What now? At least I can access the files on it. Should I transfer them to the HD and re-format the external hard drive? It is a Lacie D2 7200 rpm.

Thanks again!

[justmull1]

my computer froze while copying files to an external HD the other day. After rebooting the drive wouldn't mount or repair so i had to hook a laptop up via firewire and use a program called Data Rescue II to get the files off it. took ages. hope this helps.

[drguitar]

First off, what version of PT are you using. 7.1cs9 for PPC macs has a known bug that can corrupt your drives....happened to me very recently.

2nd, does the icon for your firewire drive show up on your desktop? If so, how much free space is left on it compared to the used space? I have often seen PT not want to play songs off a drive that is largely used until the drive is defragmented or reformatted and data copied back onto it.

If indeed your drive is not showing up on your desktop when you turn it on, I would highly suggest Alsoft's Disk Warrior to try and repair the corrupt directory. That program has saved me dozens of times. And when 7.1cs9 destroyed 4 or so drive directories a couple weeks ago, it was the only program that got them back, even though I did have some permanently lost files!

If you want, you could also try Apple's built in Disk Utility to try and "repair" the disk itself before you try Disk Warrior.

Hope this info can help you.

[Shawn Simpson]

All you need to do is go into your workspace browser and change the designation from "t" to 'r". You might also view this thread that deals with this issue. Whatever you do, don't jump into a bunch of hair-brained disk utilities. This is a common problem and an easy fix.

[drguitar]

i agree that jumping into disk utilities is not something to start with until you've done some troubleshooting.

However, if indeed the drive is not even showing up on the desktop, then it is highly likely that the drive directory is corrupted.

that's why I said IF

by the way, Disk Warrior is great compared to other drive utilities because, as my understanding goes, it does not make actual changes to the drive directory until you tell it to. It simply looks at the directory first without making anything possibly worse....unlike Techtool Pro and others.

so IF IF IF, you can't get the firewire drive to mount on the desktop

also, I have seen drives that are certainly designated as R within PT, but still have PT give the error saying that the drive is unsuitable for playback.

every situation is different, troubleshoot thoroughly

[KingTor]

It seems to me that everyone else posting here has a firmer grasp on what's going on than I do, so I'll shut up. I'm glad the beer helped.

[Shawn Simpson]

That wasn't a personal attack on your ideas. The original poster hasn't said anything about his drive not mounting to the desktop. In fact, he said he can see it there. He has a very simple problem and it's a very simple fix. I do disagree about disk utilities and never use them myself, but that's not the subject here.

[bilug]

Thanks for all the help everyone.

I moved the files to the mac HD, used disk first aid to erase the drive and put the files back on....everything is back to normal.

Now back to recording!!!!

I'm using Mac OS 10.3.9 and PT 6.9LE