Does a power outage mess up a ProTools session?

[DC-Choppah]

Working on a big session yesterday and the power glitched.

Now when I open the session, I get a blue screen of death after working in PT for a few minutes. Happened now 2 times in a row.

But when I open the last backup, no problem. No crash. Also the PC seems fine otherwise. Only crashes PT for that session that was open during the power glitch.

So is this a known thing? When the power glitches the session is glitched too? Always go to the last backup?

[albee1952]

Not only can it trash a session(corrupt data), it can trash a power supply, hard drives or even the entire computer(yep, learned all of these the hard way). If you really care about your data and your gear, there are 2 things you MUST invest in. 1-a good UPS(uninterruptable power supply) and backup of ALL data. Get a mid-sized APC(like their 1500XL) and it will save hardware and data(and made me look like the hero when the power went out in the middle of a bounce, and saved my system from a foolish electrician(commercial building) flipping breakers.

2-Data backup(which takes 2 forms). For your system drive, drive imaging and cloning are king. I can swap a system drive in under a minute and go back to work after a total crash. Or I can restore a system drive in about 90 minutes(on a bad day) and get back to the exact setup I run today, or the last version, or PT9, or PT8 on Windows XP!! I would also image or clone a sample library drive. As for sessions, copy them to another external drive(and then turn that drive off). And, if you REALLY want to be safe, copy to a 3rd external drive on a weekly basis and take that home(or any OTHER safe place). The idea being, your studio can burn to the ground, and you still have your sessions(imagine losing 5 years worth of work, or losing everything from 100 clients....make that EX-clients...)

[DC-Choppah]

I'm getting Blue Screen now randomly even using the backup session.

I'm going to get on that UPS thing.

I do have a clone drive of my music disk that backs up every night. Never had to actually use it though.

[DC-Choppah]

All of my system's memory sticks have errors during test with memtest86 now.

I get more errors than the software can count (65535+ errors) over the full range of memory addresses.

Blue screen of death as soon as I load any plugin.

Just ordered all new memory (and a UPS).


DC

[albee1952]

This might be painful. Do you have insurance? I do and was able to get a decent check for my trashed rig a few years ago. Insurance company told me where to take the PC for diagnosis(no charge) and the tech came back with a report that the rig was toast and would cost $1300 to replace(remember, its all about retail). Minus my $500 deductible and I was well on my way toward a new machine(that was better). I hope the RAM solves it for you!! You might also try a fresh install of all software(maybe the OS is now corrupt). And/or reset and redo all BIOS settings(might even be a good time to bite the bullet and update BIOS). If you have a drive image of your system drive, I would load that(after backing up any newer data, like stuff you may have on the desktop).

[DC-Choppah]

All new memory and it seems to run fine now. No blue screens, no problems.

Haven't put the UPS in yet. We get a lot of power glitches here. I'm looking forward to that UPS actually just so I can close sessions properly.