Lost files, need suggestions

[Chris Jahn]

Ok bare with me. i could be wrong about why this happened, but i think im right, cuz its happend twice now under the same circumstances.

I use an external hard drive with my computer, and once before, i did not "eject" the device before i shut down the computer, and i lost several tracks on a few songs. The files were SAVED, but something in not ejecting the drive cause a communication breakdown.

So that time i had no problem finding the tracks and putting them right back were they belong, took just a few minutes.

This time (my bass player turned off a power strip he wasnt supposed to) and the same thing happened. But this time i cant find the files ANYWERE.

I use a mac, a glyph external drive, and logic express, any suggestions.

 

[dkeene]

Hi Chris
I am aware that some external hard drives store information in a temporary cache and it is not actually written to the hard drive until the operating system is ready. When you "EJECT" the hard drive, the operating system forces unwritten data to be written to the drive. If you simply disconnect an external hard drive, that data is lost. This is not common knowledge, unfortunately.

Doug

 

[dgatwood]

Hi Chris
I am aware that some external hard drives store information in a temporary cache and it is not actually written to the hard drive until the operating system is ready. When you "EJECT" the hard drive, the operating system forces unwritten data to be written to the drive. If you simply disconnect an external hard drive, that data is lost. This is not common knowledge, unfortunately.

Not just the drive. Good operating systems cache the heck out of writes because the vast majority of data written to the disk is immediately deleted, and thus, there is no reason for it to ever even reach the hard drive. The cache on the drive theoretically should get flushed if you yank the drive (unless it's a bus-powered drive), but again, that's small potatoes compared to the operating system's write cache.

NEVER unplug a drive without ejecting it and waiting until the volume disappears from the desktop. You WILL ALMOST ALWAYS lose data if you do.

The audio data itself is probably on the disk somewhere, though. That's too big to cache usefully, and the file metadata on disk might be stale (and thus, the files may be truncated), but the metadata should at least be there somewhere. Try a search by modification date.

Oh, yes, and I know this won't help for this time, but your audio computer and hard drive should be on a UPS. It is better for a session to be interrrupted by a beep on power failure than for you to lose the entire session.