POWER OUTAGE... NOW SONG WON'T OPEN?

[TheHopiWay]

Hope you find a solution to recover your file.
FWIW here's my limited view on UPS power;
I've been very happy with my APC smart 2200 rack mount unit. Everything in my studio runs off it. Fully powered with 3 outboard racks,digital board and 3 power amps turned on I get 8 minutes to close up shop.
As well as power outage protection, the larger models convert incoming AC to DC battery and then back to regulated voltage AC (full sine wave) and so help protect all gear from fluctuation in line power at all times.
They're more than just battery backup, so much so that I'm considering eliminating my Equitech balanced power supply at this point as it seems redundant with the 2200.

[Shooshie]

Have you looked to see if there is a file in the trash called "Recovered Files?" It may be that you simply need to restore these files to the project folder. Then again, maybe not. It's worked for me before. One thing to consider: don't empty the trash just yet!

Have you changed the file suffix to .perf? That may help. Or not. Again, just something to try.

There may be some file repair utilities out there at Versiontracker.com. Worth a look.

It's so frustrating when you know the information is there, that some bit is out of place and that's probably all that is wrong!

It's worth calling MOTU and talking to Tech Support. They just might know something.

Shooshie

[twistedtom]

Do you have audio files? If they are not damaged you may be able tog import them in to a new project.

[philbrown]

Do you have audio files? If they are not damaged you may be able tog import them in to a new project.

Indeed. The Load command is your friend. Or it might be. Theoretically you should have audio files, since they are saved when recording or importing, prior to saving the actual DP project. To my knowledge the Save command would only save the DP project and wouldn't have any effect on Audio files already created. You can use the Load command to load those audio files into a new blank project. If that works you can try loading other parts of the project like the mixer, bundles, etc one by one, checking (and saving) as you go. There may be more salvageable than you think, it just needs to be reassembled. Hopefully.

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Besides backups I do a "Save As" at least once a day (usually several times a day) so if God forbid a file gets trashed (or I manage to edit it into oblivion) I can go back the the previously saved version. I wind up with a truck load of DP files but it can be a life saver.

[James Steele]

This seems like a good reason for using DP's autosave feature. I think it has a option to append a timestamp to the filename so it will keep past save versions. If you live in a area where outages a concern and don't have a UPS, you could enable this feature and if power went out during the save, you'd at least have the previous version. I know that doesn't help now. Sorry you got bit.

[newrigel]

Thanks to all for advice about how to prevent problems in the future. UPS... yes, I'll be looking into UPS... thanks. I already have 1 or 2 back ups for every song I'm working on, but s**t happens... I've had setbacks and holdups, but I've never lost a song or file in 10 years of doing this almost everyday.

Now, does anybody have any experience with opening this kind of file? Something similar like this happened once to me about 7 years ago (not a power outage, but a file that wouldn't open) and I was able to get it resolved, but that required paying a Digital Performer expert/tech to come to my studio and spend half the day, which cost a fortune, but which ended up being worth it.

Thanks again!

If you had someone come over and get your session rebuilt, then maybe this session was an audio only session without MIDI and VI's that had to be rebuilt. I use templtes that every session has the same bundle and VI assignments for consistency reasons. That way I don't have to wonder what was on this session or that... they are all identical and I just disable anything has not being used. Now my setup could be small compared to others, but the ideology remains. Keeping everything uniform and consistent helps. I think you have a Devine energy overseeing you if in 10 years, you only had one issue he he. IOW's your damn lucky! Just try the load command. 12gigs is pretty large and if your doing this type of stuff, you should re-think your gameplan so you don't have this issue in the future. I know we may sound desensitized to your issue, but there's going to be times even your DP guru won't fix your problem that just taking the advice here will insure your data integrity.

[mikehalloran]

This is an inconvenience but not a disaster.

Worst case: Load your audio files into a new project.

For the future: Upgrade to Leopard and use Time Machine. There is no excuse not to on your G5. Had you been on 10.5.x, you could have restored your files losing only last hour's work - and maybe not even that.

Those 1T "green" low power hard drives cost $80; a 2T drive costs $135 and are all you need. With all the heat that your G5 puts out, a low power storage drive makes sense. I run the same hardware you do.

In addition, DP should be upgraded to 5.13 - it is more stable than 5.12.

Anyway, to try to recover your song, start with Apple's disk utility. You will need to run it from another drive or your OS CD. Disk Warrior is the best utility if the directory file was damaged - sounds like that was part of the problem. TechTool might be able to fix the file itself but I wouldn't hold out too much hope. It's too bad that Norton Utilities no longer works on 10.4.

The way my G5 is set up, I have a small bootable partition on my Time Machine drive loaded with TechTool 5, Disk Utility and DiskWarrior plus a couple of restore utilities. Again, worst case, I am down my last hour's work.