I screwed up bad

jimistone

jimistone

long standing member
I was moving Cubase files and mp3 files to an external drive...to make room on my computers drive for an upcoming project. Now, when I pull up Cubase all the tracks and edits are there but there are no sound waves where audio should be. I have done searches for the missing files on the E drive and the C drive and comes up with zero files. I have a folder "images" and I think it had audio files in it before and now it has PEAK files. I deleted the folders off the desktop after I copied them to the E drive and like a dumb ass I emptied the recycle bin to make room for more. It's all the stuff I have recorded over the last 3 or 4 years. I have mp3s of the mixes but the raw tracks seem to have disappeared. That's not the worst part. The worst part is that I had a jingle for a TV commercial close to finished ....just needed to add some tracks I recorded on my laptop...those tracks are gone too and I'm on a deadline to have that delivered to them Thursday if next week. I can bust my as to rerecord the whole thing tonight and tomorrow (I'm playing all instruments) but I would hate to do that and the dam files still be there.

Please, if anyone can help me figure out for sure whether the audio is gone or still there somewhere on the E or C drive I would greatly appreciate it.
 
Yikes. God I fear that kind of thing.
I'm barely computer savvy. What about that 'restore to previous state ? ( Ack I'll bow out.. There's way better folks than I in this..
 
Can you locate the wav files?? And you are just missing the peak files?? If you can find the wav files but they don't reload, maybe you can import them back in. Might have to remix, but at least you won't have to retrack.
 
I feel your pain, but this is out of my league.

Best I can do is bump the thread. The more it's in top, more chances of finding a wiz to help retreive the files.
 
jimistone said:
I was moving Cubase files and mp3 files to an external drive...to make room on my computers drive for an upcoming project. Now, when I pull up Cubase all the tracks and edits are there but there are no sound waves where audio should be. I have done searches for the missing files on the E drive and the C drive and comes up with zero files. I have a folder "images" and I think it had audio files in it before and now it has PEAK files. I deleted the folders off the desktop after I copied them to the E drive and like a dumb ass I emptied the recycle bin to make room for more. It's all the stuff I have recorded over the last 3 or 4 years. I have mp3s of the mixes but the raw tracks seem to have disappeared. That's not the worst part. The worst part is that I had a jingle for a TV commercial close to finished ....just needed to add some tracks I recorded on my laptop...those tracks are gone too and I'm on a deadline to have that delivered to them Thursday if next week. I can bust my as to rerecord the whole thing tonight and tomorrow (I'm playing all instruments) but I would hate to do that and the dam files still be there.

Please, if anyone can help me figure out for sure whether the audio is gone or still there somewhere on the E or C drive I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Don't freak out yet man. Nothing is ever really deleted from a drive until you reformat the thing.

So stop doing anything now!

Now how to help you find them is the tough part...

Cubase uses a folder for all audio in each project. I really mean it can use an audio folder for multiple projects under the main folder. It will be called 'Audio' at the top of any folder.

So, if you are lucky, you need to start looking at folders called 'Audio' and hope that you named things differently each track.

'Images' and 'Peak' files are just simple data related to the cpr files. No audio in them.

If you can't find the 'Audio' files, then you may need a forensic computer specialist (stop using the computer now as data is still actually there until you write over it by using the drive: yep that means typing here) or learn a huge painful lesson.


I understand the pain of losing tracks man. I am still painfully re-recording sessions I lost due to multiple drive failure. Ugh.

You have to make sure you are getting every bit of info saved when moving files. With Cubase, the best bet is to do a 'Backup Project'. Copying files from a folder works, but you damn well better be sure everything the cpr file is linked to is in there. Otherwise you end up searching.

If you did indeed delete your project folders and the recycle bin, and you have a vested interest in getting them back, stop doing anything on the computer and pay someone to hopefully find them...

This sucks man! I feel for you. :( :( :(
 
there was a big "audio" folder that had a lot of stuff in there. I dragged and dropped in the on external hard drive it took several minutes to load in there. I tried to take it off the desk top and put it in the recycle bin, but got a message that it was too large. and it asked did I want to delete. I deleted it....After making sure it was on the external hard drive. That's probably where I screwed up. anyway it seems like the wav files should be on there somewhere. when Cubase loads up I get a box that tells me the files that are missing. That message box has a search option. I did a search of the c drive and also the external drive. is it possible that the files are still there but the software is unable to locate them?
 
Download recovery software (recuva is good and free) and install it on a drive that did not have the files you want. Then, run the software on the drive that had the files you're looking for...if it finds them, recover them to the drive that did not have the files. Hope that makes sense -- you don't want to overwrite the drive so do it all off the drive that had the files. Basically when you delete a file it's not truly deleted. The OS just tells the hard drive there is free space allocated to write over if it needs it, but the files are still there. If you stop doing everything, you should be able to recover them. Just stop writing any/all data (even browsing the internet) to that drive immediately and run the software. If you have done anything on the drive since deleting you've compromised recovery and some recovered files might be corrupt/unrecoverable, but you should be able to still recover some/most files.
 
If you copied your files to an external drive, they are probably still on the external drive. After all, you didn't delete them from that drive, did you? Well, I hope you didn't.

If they are still there, a relatively simple option is just to copy them back again.

With luck, the files are not gone, but what has happened is that Cubase doesn't know where to find them. And the reason why this is the case might be because you moved the audio files and left the peak files behind, and they need to be co-located so that Cubase can know about them.
 
gecko zzed said:
If you copied your files to an external drive, they are probably still on the external drive.
Click to expand...

That's not necessarily true if the copy/paste was interrupted for any reason. Sometimes copying additional data to the clipboard while you have a copy/cut in process will cause problems, too. I notice this is especially true if you use cut instead of copy, as cut will delete from the original source (if the paste is "complete", though that flag is not always accurate). My advice it to always use copy for important files and not interrupt the process at all until complete, and then after you verify it's copied only then delete from the source. There are many ways things can go bad. I ran a govt server for a living and saw it all...important things...lost...due to bad protocol.
 
jimistone said:
there was a big "audio" folder that had a lot of stuff in there. I dragged and dropped in the on external hard drive it took several minutes to load in there. I tried to take it off the desk top and put it in the recycle bin, but got a message that it was too large. and it asked did I want to delete. I deleted it....After making sure it was on the external hard drive. That's probably where I screwed up. anyway it seems like the wav files should be on there somewhere. when Cubase loads up I get a box that tells me the files that are missing. That message box has a search option. I did a search of the c drive and also the external drive. is it possible that the files are still there but the software is unable to locate them?
Click to expand...

How about simply looking at the drive and it's contents in explorer ? Are there contents there that would match your files? Size, time created ect? When they're moved- the directory ('path - file name) is changed.
(When you said 'searched I assumed you don't mean via the record app.

Ah I see this got covered above.. :>)
 
mixsit said:
How about simply looking at the drive and it's contents in explorer ? Are there contents there that would match your files? Size, time created ect? When they're moved- the directory ('path - file name) is changed.
(When you said 'searched I assumed you don't mean via the record app.
Click to expand...

Don't do this, OP. The more you search, the more data will be overwritten. Each search (i.e. the logs, the results, etc) will overwrite current data on your hard drive. That data could be your missing music files. Even just browsing around in explorer will overwriting things. It's imperative to stop doing everything and load recovery software on a different drive, then run it from that drive, and then recover files to that drive. Do that first, and if it finds nothing, then do what mixsit says and look around more. You need to stop writing to your drive now.
 
Nola said:
Download recovery software (recuva is good and free) and install it on a drive that did not have the files you want. Then, run the software on the drive that had the files you're looking for...if it finds them, recover them to the drive that did not have the files. Hope that makes sense -- you don't want to overwrite the drive so do it all off the drive that had the files. Basically when you delete a file it's not truly deleted. The OS just tells the hard drive there is free space allocated to write over if it needs it, but the files are still there. If you stop doing everything, you should be able to recover them. Just stop writing any/all data (even browsing the internet) to that drive immediately and run the software. If you have done anything on the drive since deleting you've compromised recovery and some recovered files might be corrupt/unrecoverable, but you should be able to still recover some/most files.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Stop everything immediately.

The 'BIG' audio folder would be the one you needed. If I duplicated my audio folder from my drives it would likely take a couple hours with the internal drives.

I am not sure you lost the Audio files yet, but you damn well need to try to find them now.

Here will be your issue, Cubase will name a file as you record it as you have set for each project folder. Default would be your track name/each consecutive track I believe. So in other words, you could have numerous 'Audio' files named 'E:\Bust Project\Audio\Bass1_02.wav. If you lose the directory, there may be several project folders with 'Bass1_02.wav file in it. But not from the same project folder.

This is why you should always: backup-backup-backup. And that means not just copy of files. Make sure you actually backup the folder via Cubase/not just copy of folders in Windows...


I feel for you man. I really do... :(
 
Nola said:
Don't do this, OP. The more you search, the more data will be overwritten. Each search (i.e. the logs, the results, etc) will overwrite current data on your hard drive. That data could be your missing music files. Even just browsing around in explorer will overwriting things. It's imperative to stop doing everything and load recovery software on a different drive, then run it from that drive, and then recover files to that drive. Do that first, and if it finds nothing, then do what mixsit says and look around more. You need to stop writing to your drive now.
Click to expand...
For them to be overwritten they would have to worse off than just renamed (different path name) right?
Thanks
 
mixsit said:
For them to be overwritten they would have to worse off than just renamed (different path name) right?
Thanks
Click to expand...

If he deleted his 'Trash' folder, then it is fair game for anything he does to overwrite the hard drive as the OS wishes. The sooner he attempts to retrieve the data, the better.

Sadly I am not feeling he will be successful... :(


I really hope I am wrong...
 
jimmys69 said:
If he deleted his 'Trash' folder, then it is fair game for anything he does to overwrite the hard drive as the OS wishes. The sooner he attempts to retrieve the data, the better.

Sadly I am not feeling he will be successful... :(


I really hope I am wrong...
Click to expand...

I see. I was thinking looking at the contents of the back-up drive.
 
mixsit said:
I see. I was thinking looking at the contents of the back-up drive.
Click to expand...

Again, sadly I think he just copied the data files and didn't get the audio files to the backup drive. :(

I get that way too many times when retrieving files for mix. So many just think the cpr or whatever any DAW calls it is the whole thing...
 
jimmys69 said:
Again, sadly I think he just copied the data files and didn't get the audio files to the backup drive. :(

I get that way too many times when retrieving files for mix. So many just think the cpr or whatever any DAW calls it is the whole thing...
Click to expand...
Yikes I see.
 
Well, I downloaded recuva. I am running it now. It is showing a lot of peak and wave files that were deleted. According to progress window it will take 45 minutes to recover the files. Hopefully, the Cubase audio track files will be recovered.
fingers crossed
thanks for the heads up on recuva nola
 
before I read the posts that I shouldn't do anything on the computer I started recorded drum tracks for the jingle again ....from scratch. I have to have it finished by Wed and don't have much free time to work on it. It may have over written some of the wav. files I dunno...when I looked at the list of deleted files a few were unrecoverable . Most looked be recoverable though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top