IOS Garageband erased hours of saved work. Can I get it back?

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Level 2

228 points

IOS Garageband erased hours of saved work. Can I get it back?

I was working on a complicated piece on Garageband on my iPad. I've had problems with it crashing in the past, so I make sure to go back to "My Songs" every 10 or 15 minutes to trigger it to save my work.

Sure enough, I tried to move the end of a section of a touch instrument while it was playing, and the app simply quit. (Nice programming, Apple!)

When I reopened Garageband, it automatically opened the song I had been working on... But all today's changes were gone. Somehow it opened to the version of the song as I had left it yesterday, with none of today's work on it showing. I went back to "My Songs" in hopes of reloading the version I'd saved just minutes earlier....

.,..which triggered your automatic save to write the older version over everything I've saved today. I lost hours of careful work.

Is there any way to get all my hard work back? Or is the quality of iOS Garageband so shoddy that it's a foolish idea to use it to create anything that I wouldn't want to randomly lose my work on?

iPad Mini, iOS 9.3.1

Posted on Apr 28, 2016 10:30 AM

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Answer 1

Mike K Author

Level 2

228 points

May 5, 2016 7:14 PM in response to Mike K

N.B. If it’s that using iOS GarageBand is just a terrible idea and I deserved to lose my music for even trying to use it for anything, please feel free to indicate by nobody replying, so this very important question about some of the most important core functionality (the ability to save your work from one session to the next) sitting uselessly unanswered after I took the time to write it, rendering everything about my entire experience with this app a complete waste of time from start to finish. Thanks.

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Answer 2

LangMurf

Level 1

41 points

May 13, 2016 11:53 AM in response to Mike K

I'm no GB expert... so I don't have an answer about getting your files back.

I would want to know why GB keeps crashing on you.

Settings | Privacy | Diagnostic & Usage Data. Are there any files with GB in the name? (I've no clue if a GB crash log is going to have GB in the name... it might not.)

If you have a Mac (Don't know if it would work the same in Windows...) when you sync your iPad with iTunes, it copies the crash logs to a hidden directory in your user folder. (<username>/Library/crashlogs I believe... makes it easier to share the logs with Apple or whoever.)

Also, if you have a Mac, you can get iOS Console which will capture logs from the iPad when the iPad's connected to the Mac.

Sorry you lost a day's work; that *****, for sure.

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