Recover lost ableton file...

Got a doozy here...


Yesterday (Friday April 27th 2012) I was working in Ableton live on a standard "new" set when I stumbled upon some cool sounds and thought I'd record my ideas quickly while I improvised a bit. I ended up making one of those "once in a lifetime, unplanned, unable to reproduce" recordings about 5 min long. I decided to save it as it's own project and then continued working. Came up with some new ideas and instead of opening a new file, decided i'd delete the audio samples I'd recorded and just "save as" a new project when I was finished. Of course, my reflexes got the best of me and I "cmd saved" instead. I immediately realized my mistake and entered Time Machine to see if the snapshot could help me. There I found the orignal set from an hour or so earlier and thought to restore, but realized that this would probably overwrite the new recording I'd made on the same set. I went back to Ableton and resaved with a new file name. Then upon restoring the old set from TM I got a message asking if I wanted to replace the existing file. I think I answered yes here and then the restore failed. Odd thing too was that the file in the hour old snapshot had the new name. (?)


I paniced and since I had to catch a bus to work, I shut off Time Machine to stop anymore snapshots from being made (for some reason, my system only has one or two at a time when I enter TM) and the critical one being erased. I realize now that this was a mistake as it erased my snapshots.


So I sat most of last night and a bit today with Data Drill and Stellar Phoenix and can't seem to find anything that will help me. I don't know where to look or how to find what I'm lookig for of course. Data Drill doesn't even show file names and of the over 1000 .wav files it finds, none of them play back without screaming noise/distortion.


Stellar Phoenix provides a better front end but I still can't seem to find any files from the right time period. (not only that, but there are files dated 01/01/1904!?!)


I figure that if the powers that be are able to recover erased/overwritten files then the information must be here somewhere. I've been trying to locate old snapshots in the snapshots.


What's even wierder is that now even the new samples I recorded are missing in Ableton. They were there last night while I was trying to fix everything. I was even able to listen to the set. Now the samples are all gone. They show up as "missing files" in Abletons native Project Manager, but they're nowhere to be found.


Any tips on how I could use these recovery programs to get these files back would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)

Posted on Apr 28, 2012 7:28 AM

Reply
4 replies

Apr 28, 2012 8:23 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for the reply Linc. Not sure where to post otherwise. I figured posting in the Lion OS section would guarantee that anyone working under the same circumstances that has had to recover lost data would see this. If you have a better suggestion, let me know and I'd be happy to move it.


Regarding Time Machine, my regular TM backups are on a 1TB LaCie external drive which wasn't connected at the time of the fiasco. My local snapshots, on the other hand are very few in relationship to the free space available on my HD. Or?


User uploaded file

Thank you again, and please if there's a better place for me to move this post I'd appreciate it if you'd point my in the right direction.

Apr 28, 2012 8:49 AM in response to Wilco75

You didn't mention before that you were restoring from a local snapshot. Obviously you do have enough space on your TM volume.


The reason why you were unable to restore may have been that the existing file was open in the application. If it's running, you should quit before restoring.


This site is for the exchange of technical information about Apple products. You'd be more likely to get help in a forum dedicated to the software you're using, or to music production in general.

Apr 28, 2012 1:35 PM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks again. Good to know that about restoring. Will certainly help in the future.


I'm confused though as to why you believe that this is the wrong forum in which to ask for help.

The short form of my question is this…


"How does one recover missing data on a MacBook Pro running OSX Lion using data recovery software like those I've listed?"


I provided detailed information about the circumstances that created my problem so a to better inform those that could help me. Also, I assume I'm not the only Mac user that records music in Ableton Live, so I don't feel I'm too far off the mark.


Thank you again, Linc. I'll post on Abletons forum as well and hopefully someone else here or there will be able to assist. Take care.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Recover lost ableton file...

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.