LOST my Cubase files....FILE RESTORE?
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Posted on May 02, 2005 07:01 am
cocofromscotland
Hello!
Member Since: Jan 12, 2004
OK, I'll cut right to the chase.
I was doing the usual "Disk Cleanup" option from within Cubase (which finds all unreferenced files and deletes them from your PC).
All well except I just deleted about 20gigs of VERY VERY Important stuff i.e. some of it not even mine!!!! Now, I tried a couple of file restore apps but they either find the entire drives worth of stuff and doesnt restore them with the right names i.e. Audio_07_01 etc or they just dont restore em properly.
** CAN ANYONE recommend a good app to get my files back in the same way as they were deleted?? ANY help would be welcome. I tried googlin it but got nowhere. I cant use system restore as it was turned off so I am really toiling here........!!
All help, advices etc MOST MOST welcome...or, I could be a little suicidal :-( (well not quite but surely VERY unhappy).
Cheers
Coco.
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jmailjimmie neutronMember
Since: Feb 14, 2005
May 02, 2005 09:42 am What's your OS? Win98 has an "Undelete" you can access from "Start, Run" and type it in (been there since the DOS days). Mine has never "functioned as intended" since I installed Norton System Works (yeah, wurx). I don't know if Win2K or XP left that in the install. From my past experience, most times that you delete a file thru something other than Explorer, most undelete programs do not find it. Also, some programs are case-sensitive when you type in search terms. The problem when audio files are found with an undelete program is that the program finds a "*.wav" and assumes that it is 16 bit, 44.1 kHz, PCM interleaved stereo, etc., audio. For the "average" computer user, it is. Most likely not in your case. Hence, all the garbage you get when you do restore something.
[edit] I was just going thru my Cubase VST documentation, and it is rather thin on certain aspects, such as this (ie, nothing). This is in the web site's manual for SX3:
"4. When the scan is complete, you can select files by clicking in the list. Use [Ctrl]/[Command]-click to select several files, and [Shift]-click to select a range of files. You can also click the Select All button to select all files in the list.
• There are situations when the Cleanup function will list files that are not unused!
- If you have moved or renamed files or folders (without updating the project files to use the new paths), there is no way for Cubase SX/SL to know that these files are used in a project.
- If you perform the Cleanup function on a folder in which there are audio files belonging to other projects (outside the folder), these files will be considered “unused”.
- Also, make sure you don’t delete any files used in other applications, or files that you generally want to keep! However, you can safely delete Image files since these can be reconstructed by the program if necessary.
5. Delete any files you don’t want to keep, by selecting them and clicking Delete.
6. Close the dialog by clicking its close button."
and that's the end of it. I like that little asterick thingey "There are situations..." No mention of "if" you make a mistake or become overly-zealous (everyone does). Perhaps if you open and scan again, there's a "restore" option? But I doubt it. Good luck.
May 02, 2005 10:55 am Coco,
It is VERY important that you not use the computer to do anything other than surf the internet until you do recover the files. (Assuming you get hold of a recovery program). If you have setup your system in accordance to the tip s outlined in the Tips section here, your probably going to be fine. But here is the trouble. When you save files on your system, they are actually placed in the next most conveient spot on the disk. The system takes noe of the physical location and moves on. This is so that your system hums along much faster. So you can see if you were to save ANY files, you risk overwriting a part of the files your trying to recover.
Try this program, www.bitmart.net/
It has been very well reviewed over at CNET.com There is a demo of it available, BUT it will only recover files sizes up to 64k. Not much use in that. Get the full version and hope for the best.
BeerHunterwww.TheLondonProject.caMember
Since: Feb 07, 2005
May 02, 2005 11:12 am Hi Coco,
I have used File Rescue here at work for a few years and let me just say that it has saved my *** more than once. It is easy to use and I have found it to be very reliable.
www.softwareshelf.com/files/products.asp?ID=11
They have a free trial available.
Good luck
May 02, 2005 04:22 pm Cheers guys - thanks for the info and advice. It is welcome and appreciated.
I am running my studio PC upstairs independent from all else and thankfully, it is never switched off and more thankfully, I have a seperate hard drive JUSt for audio.
In light of all this, I am hoping those darn files are there on my 2nd hard drive and recoverable.
Heres aquestion tho - I read in many places rebooting can move stuff in memory etc, cause physical memory to be rewritten etc...will this affect my 2nd drive?? The O/S (XP) is on the 1st, main hard drive and the 2nd one is purely for data and only Cubase data at that???
If so, I can reboot and install some new software tho I am dubious about trying yet more software on this problem. The app Im using has checked 22M sectors on drive 2 and found aboot 567 files so far (but not the ones I need) and I think, its also pulled in ALL WAV's , not just deleted ones. Trouble is, its taken almost 24 hours to check 22M sectors....theres 15% done which is baaaaaaaddd!
Coco.
May 02, 2005 04:32 pm Oh man... This reminds me I need to do another backup of my own audio disk.
I hope you get your files back! That's a REAL pain, man...
BeerHunterwww.TheLondonProject.caMember
Since: Feb 07, 2005
May 02, 2005 04:35 pm Coco,
If you get stuck, and I mean really stuck, you can always contact these guys. They are really good, fast and reasonable.
www.dtidata.com/
They have helped us recover drive contents even when the entire drive had failed.
May 02, 2005 04:54 pm Cheers bud
Aye, I would do that only I cant really afford the hit on the recovery .. this gig is gonny end up costing me or at least, I'll break even but I canny afford to shell oot to get the files back.
This is a real REAL eye opener and I'll NEVEr delete from the multi track EVER again (assumin I ever get hired again!!) til the final cd has been mastered on the CD and its in the client/mate/someones hands :-( !!
Still...we live and learn I guess.
Cheers again..
Coco.
May 02, 2005 07:14 pm The recovery process on a large HDD can take a very long time. The program is going through your drive looking at every single cluster. (Several bits in size depending on how it was formated.) be patient it will finish.
Regarding the memory being rewritten when you boot the system. Your RAM will always be cleared when you boot. Unless your system crashed, or you turn it off without using "Shutdown, your not going to lose data. There is a prcess called write behind that writes files to your drive after you make changes. If you were to interupt your system by pulling th plug while it is doing this you could lose some data. However, in your situation you have nothing to worry about on that one. Another possibility is the paging file. This is a static area of the disk that is used to swap information from RAM when it needs more data than RAM can hold at a given moment. When you boot, your system will make use of this part of the disk, hence write over information in it. None to worry here either. The system does not store program files in this part of the disk.
NOTE: You should always set your initial and maximum swap file to the same size. This ensures that the exact same area of the drive is always used for the swap file
Hope everything turns out ok.
May 02, 2005 08:40 pm Man Coco, that sucks. I feel for ya on this one. I wish I knew how to help you on this. There's gotta be a way, somehow.
The best I can offer you is my best wishes.
May 03, 2005 07:24 am Cheers Philthyone - I appreciate ya takin the time to provide the info and advices...I'll be letting it ride it out so to speak. As we speak, its done about 24% (thats taken since 10pm on Sunday night) and here its 12.23 on Tuesday lunch time!! So, its checked 33M sectors....it has 158M or so to check...its a lot man! But, I wont be stoppin it til its done.
The REAL bummer is, anyting its foudn (I think tis finding ALL WAV's both deleted an actually files that are there) arent named as they were!!!
This is a REALLLL pain as i'll now need to do audio jigsaw with 189 tracks in total if I ever get me back. Still, Id rather do that as lose the gig!!
Mike, Cheers bud. I appreciate yer sentiments...I am hopin it will be finding these parts soon!!
Cheers
coco.
May 03, 2005 04:31 pm man coco, i feel for ya...back in my filesharing days, i was running windows 98 and i (for reasons unknown) decided my recycle bin was unnessary, so i got rid of it. so i move all my mp3's to a windows TEMP folder (i forget why, but there WAS a reason) and leave them there for a week or so. oh me and a few friends shared a server on the net so we linked up our mp3's, and pics and whatnot...so we quit dooin' that and i'm giving my computer it's monthly cleansing and sho-nuff, i delete the folder....i realized it when it flashed the names of ALL 25 gigs of my music right before my eyes.....my jaw dropped and there was no way to cancel it. after running around the appartment cursing myself and computers for about 15 mins. i proceeded to search for a disk recovery utility on google.
i tried a few and ended up recovering roughly half my stuff (and i'd say 20% of that was corrupted and my songs all got meshed together)
*sigh* i LOVED and cherished that music, and now most of it was gone forever. that was the day i decided to quit filesharing.
anyway i'm sorry i can't help much, but i totaly feel your pain. it has, and will continue to happend to the best of us. just immagine the guy who put his 2" 16 track tape on top of his monitors!!!! i'm sure it's been done.
keep us posted
wyd
May 07, 2005 11:41 am WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! WEll, I got back aboot 95% of this important gig!
Which is 95% more than I had this time last week ! So, some files were corrupted, but amazingly I got back 6 out 7 in near perfect condition (each 2GB a file - the gig was 1hr 41 mins!).
Anyway, the backin vox cut off at 49 mins but I can MAYBE work roond that. I'll use the bleed on the other tracks not in use and normalise to get me some backing vocals! There was a gtr amp mic'd thru the whole gig but onyl used when not using the keys (same dude played rtm gtr/keys).
So - God bless BLEED ON MICS!! ha...savin ma butt it is.
I'll post ye a sample and let ye see if ye hear the botch job I do!! anyways, will find the name of the recovery app cause it kicks *** for sure (and free). Downside is, I stopped it at 60% (as it had recovered what I needed) and that had taken about 96 hours SOLID !!!!
Anyways, I say again - WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!
Coco.
P.S. Thanks for ALL yer inputs in this thread ye all...much appreciated for sure.
May 07, 2005 12:07 pm AWSOME NEWS COCO!! i'm excited for ya!
Mar 04, 2011 05:12 am Try to download data recover pro from recoverfiles.net/. Not sure if you guys have heard of it, but I personally tried it after accidentally deleting JPEG files in my digital camera compact flash memory card. It was very helpful, and easy to download. It doesn't just help you recover jpeg files, but literally any type of file.
Apr 29, 2011 05:49 pm HEADS UP ON DELETED FILES FOR ALL OF YOU!!!
Firstly. When you 'delete' a file, it does NOT get taken off the hard drive. All that happens is that the first letter of its name gets replaced by a question mark and the system is designed not to show anything with a question mark in front of it. THE FILE IS STILL THERE UNDAMAGED.
This is the point where you thank God for DOS! Now some setups will allow you to do the following actions from the little DOS window in Start menu/Accessories. And some won't, which means you have to restart the computer, tapping F8 (the 8th Function Key) as it boots. This will give you a new list of starting options. Choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt. That will put you into the wonderful world of DOS that's always helpfully there on your hard drive.
Once you're in DOS (you've got a blank black screen with a flashing cursor on it and nothing else, type CD\ which will put you into what's called the ROOT directory of the hard drive.
Now the magic starts. You've got to know what the extension of the file/files is/are that you're looking for. Let's pretend, for the purposes of this, they were .XYZ files (I just made that one up!) You'd type in dir *.xyz /s
The spaces are important, there's a single space between all the instructions above. And the /s is the most important bit. What you've just said in English is 'search this and all subsequent directories for anything ending in xyz'. It'll search the whole hard drive because you're starting from the root, the lowest possible folder, so EVERYTHING is a 'subsequent directory'. AND IT'LL FIND FILES WITH A QUESTION MARK IN' EM TOO!
Hey presto, instant file recovery.
Feel free to PM me if you get any more problems.
ulrichburke
