Need a miracle - help!

slinky005

Power User
Working as a music editor on a tv show with deadline.
Somehow I deleted 6-8 hours of cues from my hard drive within Cubase.
Searched their locations on my drive and they are indeed gone.

My understanding of deleting is that the drive is marked as free space and the data is not technically deleted.
Is this true and how can I recover?

Thank you
 
Do a Google search for "Data recovery software"...

I can vouch for Kroll Ontrack, but we used their professional recovery services - it was work related about 15 years ago before you could just do it yourself.

https://www.ontrack.com/
 
Yes, it's technically true that the files are not removed, just marked as no longer there to be written over later, so the first step is to shut down the computer immediately. Modern systems are constantly writing temp files so the chance your data could be overwritten or corrupted just through use goes up exponentially.

There is some software out there that will help recover deleted files, (I've personally had decent experience with one called "Data Rescue" on the Mac, not sure about Windows). The world heavyweight in this area is a company called "Drive Savers". They cost a fair bit of money to do what they do (probably not justifiable outside of professional budgets), but they have a reputation for getting results in catastrophic situations.
 
Yes, it's technically true that the files are not removed, just marked as no longer there to be written over later, so the first step is to shut down the computer immediately. Modern systems are constantly writing temp files so your data could be overwritten or corrupted just through use goes up exponentially.

There is some software out there that will help recover deleted files, (I've personally had decent experience with one called "Data Rescue" on the Mac, not sure about Windows). The world heavyweight in this area is a company called "Drive Savers". They cost a fair bit of money to do what they do (probably not justifiable outside of professional budgets), but they have a reputation for getting results in catastrophic situations.
Even overwriting the files the data can be recovered.

In the work situation I mentioned previously, the possible recovery list included files from the prior 5 OS installations on the same server :)

However, that was with an expensive paid service, not a DIY tool.
 
as long as you DO NOT record or save any data to the HD, your files are there. A recovery software will index and recover all of whats in that HD, you will need another HD equal to the occupied size of the current HD for the software to put the recovered files.
 
It may be a bit late for you, but I am a HUGE proponent of automated backups. I work as a software developer, and a few years ago my hard drive died during crunch week. Since then, I have cloud backup with Backblaze, local backup with Time Machine and weekly full backups to a USB-C drive. Storage is cheap nowadays and your data is too valuable not to be vigilant.
 
Strange how this happened, if you delete tracks from Cubase then they remain in the Pool until you remove unused media. In Cubase, if you go to the Project menu, then Pool, you would see all media including anything in Cubase's trash (i.e. not the recycle bin).
 
Last edited:
Strange how this happened, if you delete tracks from Cubase then they remain in the Pool until you remove unused media. In Cubase, if you go to the Project menu, then Pool, you would see all media including anything in Cubase's trash (i.e. not the recycle bin).
In the previous version of Cubase I created a "delete from disk" macro - Cntl > Shift > Backspace
The command does not put the files in the trash but deletes from disk completely. The original intention was to remove from project and then do my delete macro.
I haven't checked but I assume its a built in macro for "delete all form the pool" command.
This is the only way I can surmise that it happened.
 
It may be a bit late for you, but I am a HUGE proponent of automated backups. I work as a software developer, and a few years ago my hard drive died during crunch week. Since then, I have cloud backup with Backblaze, local backup with Time Machine and weekly full backups to a USB-C drive. Storage is cheap nowadays and your data is too valuable not to be vigilant.
Best advice of the year (that I have decided to take from now on).
 
Advanced Disk Recovery is recovering now - seems to be working. Under 30 bucks.
When it first happened I was ready to bite the bullet and pay what I thought was $400. When you're in your initial panic stage you're very vulnerable.
Don't feel bad... The company I work for paid $25k... And they did it remotely over a dial up line!

Of course, compared to the business loss it was worth it.
 
It may be a bit late for you, but I am a HUGE proponent of automated backups. I work as a software developer, and a few years ago my hard drive died during crunch week. Since then, I have cloud backup with Backblaze, local backup with Time Machine and weekly full backups to a USB-C drive. Storage is cheap nowadays and your data is too valuable not to be vigilant.
i use Backblaze as well. great system, very transparent, but there when you need it. i also use Dropbox for file sharing, but it also serves as a backup for whatever's in there too. using Symlinks, i point other folders (like downloads, desktop, etc) from all my computers to Dropbox as well. so basically any file i typically need from any computer is available to me (if i want). i do a local hard drive backup monthly or so with SuperDuper - an old app for Mac, but there are many similar apps available today. on the Mac system, if for some reason a computer crashes, i can boot from that SuperDuper backup and run from that external (in addition to having the files).

Backblaze, Dropbox and Local combination works for me. note that most of these are only going to have ~30 days of history. if i delete something, then need it months later, i'm out of luck. but i do separately archive certain things like my Lightroom photo catalog, etc for that purpose.

it's very easy and inexpensive to have backups these days. even just doing Backblaze alone is a great first step.
 
Back
Top Bottom