Crap, crap, oh crap Noooo!

That sucks Dave. If it's any consolation, your second version is bound to be better.....and at least you have the export to work from. 
 
A similar thing happened to me some time ago. Saved a project, opened it up the next day and the whole thing was blank. Luckily I had a history of Gobbler revisions to fall back on...

Ouchity... that is certainly some supreme suckage. I have to ask though out of my own paranoia and substantially less professional capacity in regards to computators... how did the MIDI data on the backups get deleted as well?
 
I ask because I am highly neurotic about employing "Save As" throughout my projects which in my feeble mind would mean even if I did something catastrophic in one of my "adventurous" moods or perhaps in a drunken stupor that I could revert back to an older version and all would be well (just missing any new data) and if I copied a project (with all associated files) to a backup device I would expect it to open exactly as it was saved.
 
So when you say you've done backups of the project how could the MIDI files get wiped on those backups? Were the MIDI files not saved along with the backup (and merely relying on a local "pool")? When opening the backup project did it somehow try to sync with the current project and wipe out the MIDI data? Perhaps there is a setting in Preferences somewhere preventing the files from the backup to load?
 
You are far more learned than I am so I am assuming you have searched for the raw MIDI files in the appropriate places but if not maybe they are still lurking about somewhere. Whatever happened I'd be curious as to any possible answers why you lost your data if you do end up figuring it out. Maybe a call to support or flagging one of the Bakers via PM is in order. This also seems like the type of thing scook might be able to help with (clever fellow that he is).
 
Anyway, that blows but if you get it sorted out I'd certainly be interested in any solutions. If it can happen to you I can only imagine someone like me is far more vulnerable to disappearing data. Yikes!
 
Good luck.

Man, I'm sorry Dave.

kakku
Perhaps there should be kind of a failsafe mechanism in Sonar when Sonar notices that a huge amount of data is being wiped out. It could ask are "you sure" when deleting big amounts of midi data or audio.

I've been away from my DAW and Sonar for so long I've been forgetting things but this shook some stuff loose.
 
IIRC a Ctrl + A + Del action should NOT delete MIDI clips due to the non-destructive editing component of Sonar. I'm not sure but even if you performed this action on all versions of the project the clips may still be stored somewhere.
 
However, and again I am not sure of this because it has been a while, there is a setting in Preferences for "Non-Destructive MIDI Editing" (or something like that) that is checked by default (meaning you are by default using the non-destructive mode). If that is unchecked then the delete action will wiped out MIDI clips/data from the drive(s).
 
Still though I think a Ctrl + A + Del command would delete the actual clips in a project. Not just clear the notes out of the clips... so if the clips are there but the notes are gone that's pretty weird.
 
So basically what I'm saying is I have no freaking clue and this post is probably less than useless... lulz.
 
It made sense before I started typing it though so perhaps it'll lead bit to some possible solutions.

I don't because I'm pretty vigilant about saving manually. If I did though I'd probably set auto save to engage using the "after X amount of edits" instead of the time interval option. I am a wanderer so instead of it diligently saving away when I'm likely in the other room doing something dumb for a couple hours it would just save based on activity.
 
IIRC the auto save only keeps a certain number of saves before old ones roll off so if I set it to a time range and did my old wandering routine I'd just have a pile of saves where nothing happened.
 
I may be wrong on that.

sharke
That sucks Dave. If it's any consolation, your second version is bound to be better.....and at least you have the export to work from. 
 

Probably true, but it is human nature to think that the lost creation was the best creation. Nothing is ever as good as what we imagined. In 1797 it was a person from Porlock, today it is a computer glitch.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock
 
 
 

Good news is that the reconstructed project is coming along nicely, and as sharke optimistically suggested, the new version will indeed be better, I think. The empty project still had all the instruments loaded so I didn't have to search around for the patches again. My elaborate tempo map was intact, as was the guide track and markers.
 
How did the backup get blanked out too? Well, I'd done a backup right after closing out of SONAR, overwriting the previous backup. Talk about your Duh moments.
 
The irony is that until recently this would have never happened. With the old machine, I would not have been able to keep 28 instruments live without freezing most of them. I was enjoying the luxury of my new DAW's 16GB of RAM being able to do load so many instruments simultaneously. Having the entire string section up in the PRV at once is such a joy for composing elaborate arrangements. With great power comes great responsibility, I guess.

Good! I'm glad you're getting it back. I was thinking that delete just changes the extension name so, shouldn't everything still be there but just with a different .ext ? I know just enough to get in trouble though.. I know that a tech "accidentally" wiped a data drive that had about 2 years of my daughters audio work on it. The claimed that they did not wipe it, but they obviously did. The reformatted the both drives instead of just the C drive. A couple of years ago I had another tech guy work on it and he recovered almost everything, if not everything. I was surprised but he got it back. Recuva won't get it back?
 
J

Bit, I'm happy to hear that your problems are not a complete loss and that you're making good progress again.