Recoveries From The Abyss Tales?

[Mason John]

Okay, so I just decide to hop back into my DAW to try and work on my track a little more. Mind you, I'm still a novice in ways so every little bit of progression counts. So it's pretty much a nightmare if that progress were to get fucked up, which is exactly what happened to a project I had started on maybe 2 days ago. Here I am thinking this is "the one", you know, the track where you feel like you're coming into this process and finally starting to find a style and get your technical trickery down. I almost flipped my head off when I found this project corrupted when trying to open it up.

To be fair, my computer did shut off suddenly while the project was open, but I had saved it before then and this has happened before w/o corrupting any of my other projects. If I weren't to the point where this is starting to become like the back of my hand, I'd probably be crying right now instead of typing, but thankfully I was able to copy the wav files into a new project and remembered the rack settings, the filters used, parameter and subtrack settings etc. Probably just more lucky since the racks were pretty barebones anyway, but nonetheless it did get me thinking...

I'm wondering if any of you guys have ever suffered that horrifying nightmare of a project suddenly going corrupted on you just as it was coming together, and if you managed to recover it. I'm talking hard corruption, and not a solution as simple as using a back-up restore (if the DAW supports that; mines does, but it didn't do shit this time) or alternate copy you had saved as an earlier version. I'm talkin' no back-ups around, main and only copy gets fucked, and it's do or die. Have you ever managed to get it fully restored, and if so, how?

I get the feeling it's that kind of nightmare that keeps coming back ;(....

 

[lostnthesound]

It happened to me once upon a time ago. Since then, I now have three hard drives setup: one for working projects, one for samples and one that backs up the content of the previously two mentioned drives. I never save anything on my internal drive anymore as having to dig through the bottomless pit of a corrupt drive is painstaking and typically ends up with no positive results.

Cheers.

 

[djdizzy]

what DAW do you use? i've had that happen a couple times in ableton, each time it was from a vst causing the entire project to be corrupted to the point of not even being able to open it. so i just started a new project at the same bpm and dragged the project's tracks into the new one from the file browser, i love that about ableton it saved my ass.

i've had it happen in the past with acid pro, yeah this was a long time ago. i was just screwed. after i got over the frustration and held myself back from kicking the computer i tried to remake the track the best i could and i couldn't replicate it. it came out similar but was definitely different. best advice i have is try not to dwell on it, try to redo it the best you can from memory or start a new track with borrowed ideas from the lost project.

 

[Mason John]

@lostnthesound: Definitely sounds like a setup I need to look into some day. I have all my stuff currently on a flash drive, and some samples on my hdd. I was considering doing cloud backup of the project files and most of my samples, but there are privacy concerns. Plus I'm just not sure how solid a method that actually is.

@djdizzy: I use MuLab. I looked into the cheaper versions of FL but it doesn't seem like you can record with MIDI devices in those, so it kinda kills the appeal. Nice to hear Albeton has that feature; MuLab has it too, but what happened w/ me the other night overrode that feature completely. I've been considering making a jump to Albeton when the time is right.

That vst-crash issue is something that pissed me off too when I was starting out w/ some Cakewalk stuff and later LMMS. Been fortunate enough my current DAW doesn't have issues w/ any of the vsts I've used, other than perhaps turning it into a memory hog and causing it to crash that way, but that's a problem outside the DAW's control.

I feel for 'ya on what happened w/ Acid there.