Did I lose my work forever?

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pennylink

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When saving some extra tweaking I did on an existing Sonar 2.2 bundle last night, my PC froze. I shut the computer down, and when I tried to re-open the bundle file this morning, the following error comes up "Not a Cakewalk format file". :(

The bundle still has the usual .cwb extention; I tried opening it both from within Sonar, and from Explorer, with the same frustrating result. I did a disk scan to make sure everything was OK there, but still no go. (All other bundles open as normal.)

My setup: PIII/800/512 Ram/dual hard drives/Win98/Sonar2.2/AardvarkQ10 sound card.

I had saved a (much) earlier version of the same file under a different name, and luckily I can still open that, but I've probably invested another 20 hours since then.

Is there anything I can do to reclaim my problem bundle file?

Thanks for any advise! :)
 
That sounds like it is lost for good.

Tough to hear, but save, save, save.

I try to save once every 10-15 minutes.
 
If you've got a file that you're really serious about keeping,burning a backup to CD every once in awhile is the safest thing to do.Spindles of CD's are very cheap and given the amount of time you put into a project they are a worthwile investment.
Sorry I have no ideas about your lost project.You could try to retrieve the audio files with a search or using the Cakewalk audio finder and piece together your project.As difficult as this may sound it may be less work than redoing the project.

The problem with situations like this is you usually will wait for a disater to happen before you get into the practice of backing up.

One more thing,98 is w-a-y unstable compared to XP in my experience.Just something to think about.
 
You can try opening the file in Safe Mode (hold down Shift key while opening). This will prompt you to load your plugins one by one. Try skipping all of them the first time and see if the file will open.

If it does, close it without saving, and reopen in Safe mode but this time load the first plugin and skip the rest. Keep repeating until you find one that might be causing the problem.

Don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try.

Also, you might want to contact Cakewalk support. Sometimes they can help open a corrupted file.
 
I'm 99.9% sure this will work.

NOTE: Before you do this make a back up of your cwb file!

You can rename the cwb file to .wav. When you open it in Sonar it will be one long wave file, you can cut and paste each track to a new track. It may take a while to sync up, however once done you will have all of your takes.

Porter
 
Presumably you dumped the original data and cwp files? For any data and work in progress, the rule remains: It doesn't exist untill it's in at least two seperate locations.
:(
 
Thanks for the advice. I did call Cakewalk support , but they had no immediate solution, other than mailing them the file so they could look at it (the file is too large to e-mail). I'll try your other suggestions when I get home tonight.

I've been saving all my projects directly as bundles, then burning the occasional back-up to CD. Is there a better method of setting up/saving your work? Using project files? I'm somewhat unclear about the difference between bundles and project files...

In the meantime, I did start re-creating my lost work from my last back-up. The good news is, it looks like it'll take me more like 4 hours to re-create it as opposed to the 20 hours it took me to do it the first time around. :)

I'll still try your suggestions, though. Thanks again.
 
pennylink said:
...I've been saving all my projects directly as bundles, then burning the occasional back-up to CD. Is there a better method of setting up/saving your work? Using project files? I'm somewhat unclear about the difference between bundles and project files...
Click to expand...

Yes bundles are fine for backup. But the point is that you should keep two options.
Why not keep the cwp and data also? Disk space?
Also you'll find that some are saying saving the raw data files is slightly safer as the whole thing can't get lost to a single corruption. But buns do take up a bit less space.
Ether way- two physical locations!:D
 
mixsit said:
But buns do take up a bit less space.
Click to expand...
That's because it gets of all the slip-edited data and unused wave files.

If you want to keep all the files, use Folder Per Project. :)
 
No, I have no shortage of disk space (yet...), just wasn't sure.

OK, it's folder-per-project from now on with bundles as back-up, and the occasional CD back-up in case the PC/hard disk completely crashes. :D
 
pennylink said:
OK, it's folder-per-project from now on with bundles as back-up, and the occasional CD back-up in case the PC/hard disk completely crashes. :D
Click to expand...
This is the beauty with Folder-Per-Project: You don't need Bundles anymore!

You just burn the whole folder to a CD or copy it to another HD (whatever), and that's it! :)
 
moskus said:
That's because it gets of all the slip-edited data and unused wave files.

If you want to keep all the files, use Folder Per Project. :)
Click to expand...

And if you do a 'Clean Audio Folder' before bun'n of back-up, it cleans out all those unused files.
 
mixsit said:
And if you do a 'Clean Audio Folder' before bun'n of back-up, it cleans out all those unused files.
Click to expand...
But you don't need to (as opposed to bundles). I like to have the "unused" files around. :)
 
moskus said:
But you don't need to (as opposed to bundles). I like to have the "unused" files around. :)
Click to expand...
Yeah i have those too. 1.5+ gig songs. Voc w/ R121, voc w/ at4047, voc w/ A51, guitar 1 w/ 57, guitar 1 w/..., guitar 2 w/... solo 1---8...........:D
 
You're like me. I need to buy a DVD burner to backup my projects...

I'm guessing it's woth it! :D
 
Just as a follow-up...

Tried both loading the corrupt .cwb file in safe mode and renaming it .wav, but unfortunately neither method worked. I guess the file must be VERY corrupt, kind of like a politician. ;)

However, I did find a handful of individual wav files on my data drive that are from that project, even hough I had saved it as a bundle. The audio is in somewhat haphazard order, but it looks like I'll be able to rescue a few crucial elements (you know, those takes where you make mistakes but they come out sounding great...)

It's save, save, save, and keep plenty of back-ups from now on. :D
 
You should still try sending the file to Cakewalk. Maybe you can burn to a CD and mail it to them.
 
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