Undelete or Recover Logic Pro Files From Emptied Trash
I recently inadvertently deleted a bunch of Logic Pro projects and quickly realized it wasn't a simple task to try and recover them.
I've written a quick description here of the process that might hopefully help others in a similar predicament.
Unfortunately none of the popular data restoration programs are able to deal with the Logic Pro project file (the one with extension .logic) directly. As I came to learn the project file is actually a "bundled" file (or folder) made up of three discrete files.
If you select any Logic project in the finder then press Control-Click, then select "Show Package Contents" from the pop up menu you should see a folder called:
"LgDoc"
and inside that folder are the three discrete files:
- "displayState"
- "documentData"
- "windowimage.jpg"
The critical file is the one called "documentData". It's a text file that can be opened with Text Edit but it actually contains all the information Logic seems to need to restore the entire project.
After lots of trial and error I finally found a system that, although not as straight forward as clicking one button, did work and I was able to restore the deleted project. The data restoration program that worked successfuly for me was "Data Rescue 3" by Prosoft.
Here are the steps once you have Data Rescue 3 running:
(Please note these steps are just to try and restore the Logic Project NOT the corresponding Audio Files, that is a separate process)
1. Select the drive that contains the files to be recovered and click "Next"
2. From the new window, scroll down and select the "FileIQ" pane and click continue.
3. Drag an example "documentData" from from a Logic project (using the steps above). In the "Learned Types" pane on the left, rename the file to something you'll remember, eg "Logic documentData Files". After Saving click on "Back"
4. Select "Deep Scan" to initiate the search (Please note the "Deep Scan" option takes a while, depending on the size of the volume. You may have success using "Quick Scan" or "Deleted File Scan" instead). From the menu, you can select "Expert" then click on "Show Details" to see what files are being found, hopefully you should see the category you re-named in step 3.
5. Once the scan is complete, restore the files. Within the folder that you specified you should hopefully see a bunch of files named :
cust_file_1-00001
cust_file_1-00002
cust_file_1-00003
etc
Unfortunately, this is the tedious part. You will need to open each file individually and search through the text to find a string that is hopefully contained in the project you're looking for. Good strings to try are:
- key words in the project file name
- EXS sampler instrument names
- instrument names
- Audio file names
You'll get better results if search for any instrument or audio file name that you know is particulary unique to the project you're looking for.
Once you think you've found a match:
6. Create a new project in Logic, name it, save it and close the project (important).
7. Using the steps I described above, open the corresponding "LgDocs" folder of your newly created project and copy the "cust_file_1-0000X" that you think is the matching file to that folder.
8. Remove (or trash) the "documentData" file.
9. Rename the restored file you just copied to "documentData" (effectively replacing the one you just removed or trashed)
10. From the finder, double click on the corresponding, newly created Logic project and it should open. If it's not the correct project you will need to repeat the process of searching through the restored files, copying and renaming it.
As I mentioned, this process is to try and recover the main Logic project only.. unfortunately any corresponding audio will need to be restored separately.
Hope this helps.