Help! My session files got deleted!

[jevais]

I've been having trouble installing DINR plug in, so I followed the directions listed here: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare...s-preferences/

Basically, it had me delete my Avid Preferences library.

Doing so made me delete all of my recent sessions, and for some reason the files on my laptop don't have any of the saved mix information, so my session is just gone.

That doesn't sound right, so can someone help me figure out where my session information is?

System Info:
Avid Pro Tools Artist 2022.5
macOS Monterey

[Top Jimmy]

If all you did was delete prefs, you didn’t delete the session. All you did was clear the recent list. Search your hard drive(s) for *.ptx, *.ptf, or *.pts corresponding to what version of Pro Tools you’re using and you should get a list of the Pro Tools sessions on your hard drive.

As a matter of good file management, you should know where you are saving your sessions to.

[jevais]

That's the strange thing, I have the exact file location where the backups should be, and the files are there, but when I load them they're missing a lot of track information. The old "recent files" were the only way I was able to find the work I had been doing. Searching based on file name or even date modified isn't pulling up any of the right information.

[Darryl Ramm]

As Jimmy said, if all you deleted was preferences then you have not deleted your content. You need to be super clear what you have done.

Why are you talking about *backups*... if you did not delete the sessions just go to where the sessions are and open them. Or if you can't find them then search the computer for them.

It's super easy for folks to get confused about session files and content associated with sessions. Use search tools if needed to scan your entire system, including removable media... folks do mess up and end up recording stuff to removable media (including backup volumes, USB transfer drives, etc.) when they meant it to go to where they normally work. Modern systems with fast SSDs (like any Mac nowadays) you probably should be recording to the internal SSD, which can help avoid some finger/drive problems.

If you are looking at backups and work is missing then should it be there? Was it backed up recently? How do you know your backups have been working? Have you been testing them? If the backups are bad then don't shoot yourself in the foot further, unless you actually deleted the work forget the backups and go find the original session files/content.

One problem I've seen folks end up with is they do so many messy saves that they end up with multiple session files scattered in session folders and sometimes in the *wrong* session folder. So search for the .ptx file by wildcard name not just for session folders by name.

And how are you searching? Spotlight will only find stuff if your drives have been indexed properly, and it's a buggy piece of crap at times.

So in Terminal...

$ sudo find / -iname MySession\*.ptx -print

Where MySession is the start of what your session file would be called. Find will scan every mounted drive/volume and look for files starting in "MySession" and end in ".ptx" The iname makes the search case insensitive.

And if you can't find stuff then it might have ended up on any removable drive. So connect/mount them and repeat the find.

And if you've manually been configuring mount points for external drives you may have a drive mounted over the top of existing content. So eject/unmount all external volumes and run find again.

Check the trashcan (find will look there as well, but easy to check by hand).

[Ben Jenssen]

From my viewpoint, it looks like you didn't understand the folder/file structure of a PT session, and relied on the opening dialog to open/create sessions. Deleting prefs, you deleted all recent items from the dialog.

A PT session is stored as a folder with the exact name of the session, and inside there is the 'Audio files' folder, the 'session backups' folder and so on. The session files have the .ptx ending. Those are the files you want to double-click.


Added: Where those session folders are, was decided by you when you created them, but I think, if you just saved them at the default place, it would be in your Music or Documents folder, at least somewhere in your Home folder.