I finished a long session today. I went to do a rough mix for the artist so they had something to take home. Something got deleted in the file Sonar file, because it no longer contains hardly any of the tracks. (I did not have Sonar set to "recover last x versions).

I tried loading the Project wav files into a new project, but I got a lot of gibberish. Lots of tracks/takes and nothing synced up.

2 reasons for hope:
1. I do have the Audio Folder with a lot of wav files.
2. I also have a folder containing WOV and WTR files.

I think someone who really knows the ins/outs of Sonar could reconstruct the project. Can you help? I seriously think it could be recovered if someone knows how Sonar works internally.

Thanks!

-Tim

i think i'ves read a similar thread once, and i think that there was an answer for all those "lost" tracks but i don't remember if it was here or in the X1 forum.

Have you tried un-deleting the original?
http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

John

No, I have not tried undeleting the original. Was my original deleted?

My original project file had been saved time and again over 6+ hours. Everything was there. We had played back everything. When I went to File/Export to RIFF Wav and MP3, I got only 2 tracks. When I went back to look at the project file, most of the tracks were empty. Obviously the export "worked." How did the data get "lost"? I can't "undo" anything since the file was saved.  

The strange thing was all but 2 tracks in my project file looked like they had been wiped. All my tracks were "simple," meaning they only contained multiple takes. There were no bounced tracks, etc.

Do these contain enough info for Sonar to rebuild the project?
1. Audio Folder with a lot of wav files.
2. A folder containing WOV and WTR files.

If so, does anyone know what steps to take.

tim@homestudio


1. Audio Folder with a lot of wav files.

If these are intact, you can rebuild it.
They will be the original recorded audio tracks. The filenames are somewhat cryptic, so it may take a bit of sorting to get everything in the right place.
Don't sweat the WOV files. These are the graphic waveform images, and they will regenerate.
I'm not sure what the WTR files are.

tim@homestudio


No, I have not tried undeleting the original. Was my original deleted?

Sorry... I read your original quickly and thought you had deleted the original file, the cwp file. I did that once and got it back with Recuva.

John

Can you give me advice (steps) as to how to rebuild it?
My first attempt was to open a new project and import the files from the Audio folder. That just gave me a whole bunch of wav files.

(If I had exported each track as a wav file, I could them. I have done that before.  (That is how I share tracks with other studios using other software. Then the tracks load and sync. )

I need advice on the steps to rebuild the project file.
I think the Audio folder contains the wav data.
But I also think Sonar stores the "information" as to what to do with those wav files somewhere else. I think that is how it operates efficiently and uses less data space.
I think the rebuild has to be simple, if someone knows the steps.
Do I open a new project?
Do I open the old project that has the tracks that looked wiped? If so, how do I recover the data?

Thanks for any ideas you may have.

Depending on a few things you had set up before recording, you should have a little or a lot of work to do.
Sonar does keep all the wave files. It's just figuring out what belongs to what.
It is a good idea to always use per project audio folders and to name each track before recording. Then all your audio for each song will be in the folder and will be named. Sonar will also add take numbers and usually a higher number relates to a later take.
The CWP file manages this for you but if it became corrupt you better get everything off that hard drive now. 
During a recording sessions I always do a "save as" to a second drive before moving on to next song. Make sure to select "Copy audio" options always.

Thanks for the ideas.

I use per project audio folders, so it's all very organized. All the data (wav files) are in the project audio folder. I can see what I want. When I import the wav files into the track, they don't line up. There is no "marker" info attached to each wav file. I would need to know the exact start point to position the import for each wav file in the track. Then it would work. I can't manually line up all the wav files. It just won't work.

I need "marker" info embedded in the wav files or located somewhere else in Sonar. I was assuming some place Sonar keeps that information. I just called tech support and the guy did not think it is stored anywhere. He suggested importing the files and lining them up. Lining them up would be impossble.

Like you say, the wav files have numbers (sort of like sequential take numbers), reflecting the multiple takes on a track. For example, Vox Harmony1 has multiple takes, so there are multiple wav files with that track name. I need multiple wav files to fill that track; they would need to be placed at the right spot. (The highest number is not going to be the entire track.) And they would have to be manually lined up...I have 8 vocal tracks - I can't line them up. :-)  It would be faster to re-record than to try and line things up.

The weird thing is console view has all the track names correct, as well as other settings that were done fairly late in the session. I can't imagine how I could have wiped the tracks. That would have required some pretty deliberate "human error." What is missing is all the volume envelopes I created as I was preparing to start a rough mix.

Thanks for the help - if anyone knows if there is marker data stored anywhere for the wav takes, please let me know.

Unfortunately, I've run into this situation myself. What happened is, I originally had a file called "Chocolate Pie.cwp", with the audio file named "Track 1, Rec 9", which I believe is a generic name that is made by Sonar, and I accidentally saved another file over that name both "Chocolate Pie.cwp" and "Track 1 - Rec 9"), when I didn't want to. I'm trying out Recuva, doing a deep scan, but I'm not sure when it will finish, nor do I know if it will ever find the file. Problem is, I've even saved over the backup version, big big mistake! What do I do now? By the way, what are the .wtr files in Sonar? I've tried to open them with a regular program, but they won't open. It says, "Windows can't open this file. Windows need sto know what program created it." Does the picture Cache contain Audio? Are the waveforms in the picture cache the actual audio? Or are they just pictures? I'm confused!