Strange Phenomena

[sonicpsyops]

Greetings,
Last night, I put the finishing touches on a project (using Sonar 7 Producer) and decided to hit the sack before exporting the audio. When I closed the project, an error popped up saying, "Microsoft Windows XP Pro has encountered a problem and has to..." I didn't pay much mind to it as this has happened before on rare instances and so I clicked OK and it went straight to the desktop without crashing.

This morning, I was stunned to find out that when I tried to open the project a message popped up saying that the file couldn't be found. The project folder was there but when I opened it, it revealed the audio folder and nothing else. The audio folder was empty. Upon opening previous projects, it would reveal the audio folder and the respective Cakewalk Project file. I did a search of the five drives I have and no luck. I tried to restore to a previous state. No luck. For over an hour I desperately searched for that project to no avail. It couldn't have just disappeared due to an error message. My fear was that the file had become corrupt due to whatever message that was.

I had accepted defeat and thought, well, I guess that'll lurn me for not backing up my stuff. I opened Windows Explorer to find a place to back up my other projects and I found the audio folder for Cakewalk on one of the other drives. I opened the folder and found folders to all of my projects including the one to the project it couldn't find. I opened the project folder expecting again to see the audio folder with no project file but instead I see the audio folder and an empty windows icon. When I tried to open the icon, I got a message saying, "can't open this file because Windows does not know what program created it. Do you want to try and open it with another program?" I clicked yes and chose Sonar 7 to open it. To my relief, the project that I thought was lost forever suddenly appeared except it had been renamed to something like FCM2* or FMC2* I can't remember which but I know it ended with "2*" and "F" was in there somewhere.

My first question is: what the hell happened!?!?

Second question: does Sonar automatically back files up on to another drive somewhere?

 

[mixsit]

Was the previous night the first time you closed this proj? Do you now have two sets of folders/files (except for this one)- one you wern't aware of? Wondering if this one wasn't directed to where you thought, or maybe that that link was dammaged.
WAG
(wild ass guess

Second question: does Sonar automatically back files up on to another drive somewhere?

'Consolidate Audio but it's not automatic (far as I know) so I guess you'd know it if you were..never mind.

 

[Whale Bone]

New projects created in the new workspace that's there by default when sonar is opened are stored in the default directory for projects until you specifically save them somewhere. If you create a new project, however, you determine where it's going before you record anything. There may be autosaves for the project file somewhere, but not the audio files.

Are you saving these to an external usb disk that might've become disconnected without its cach being flushed, or on a disk that is failing? Check your event log for disk errors - Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Log (or Event Log within Compuer Management) -> System Log. Look for disk related errors. Use the Disk Management console under Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management to identify the disk drives referred to in event log errors.

You might want to check your disks for errors anyway, to prevent the possible loss of other things.

 

[Clark Grizwald]

I had a similar occurrence several times.

I leave the com on 24/7 and after cutting a successful track, many times I just walk out and leave it. (without hitting save)

Once in a while, it will do the "error message" and automatically close all apps.

You guessed it! My new track is gone!

I've learned to hit save!

 

[Whale Bone]

Actually, after I've recorded anything, the audio files are always somewhere after a crash as they are written at the time of recording. I'm using an internal drive, but on an external drive, some crashes could cause a loss of cahced, but not written data. The project file is the only thing I've ever lost.

 

[sonicpsyops]

Hello everyone and thank you for your responses.

Was the previous night the first time you closed this proj? Do you now have two sets of folders/files (except for this one)- one you wern't aware of? Wondering if this one wasn't directed to where you thought, or maybe that that link was dammaged.
WAG
(wild ass guess

No. I had been working on this project for about three weeks. However, I didn't build the system I had it built by the dealer I purchased it from. It could be, that the dealer set up some sort of archive proceedure but I didn't know that was possible with Sonar. is it? And why the unrelated name change?

 

[sonicpsyops]

Are you saving these to an external usb disk that might've become disconnected without its cach being flushed, or on a disk that is failing? Check your event log for disk errors - Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Log (or Event Log within Compuer Management) -> System Log. Look for disk related errors. Use the Disk Management console under Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management to identify the disk drives referred to in event log errors.

You might want to check your disks for errors anyway, to prevent the possible loss of other things.

No, I'm saving everything internally but I didn't think to check the event log for disk errors. Thank you for suggesting that as, you're right, I may be having a disk failure.

 

[sonicpsyops]

I had a similar occurrence several times.

I leave the com on 24/7 and after cutting a successful track, many times I just walk out and leave it. (without hitting save)

Once in a while, it will do the "error message" and automatically close all apps.

You guessed it! My new track is gone!

I've learned to hit save!

I work with CPU intensive sample libraries, I'm a composer, so I save quite frequently because crashes are almost guaranteed if I didn't as the RAM gets sucked up quickly.

 

[sonicpsyops]

After a week and a half of vacation, I've started a new project and we'll see how this goes but I will definately back up all of my projects from now on. Since I work mostly in the MIDI realm losing audio files, although annoying, isn't the end of the world for me. Losing an entire project, on the other hand, with all of the MIDI data is a serious problem. If anything I can back my projects up on external flash drives.

I'm still perplexed as to how and why this happened. If I find anything out, I'll be sure to post it for future reference. Thanks for all of the responses so far.