This is REALLY immature of me, but here goes: 

We got it all wrong.  Joe is on to something here.

If we wait until AFTER we lose our data, THEN do a backup, it will run MUCH faster.

He found yet ANOTHER performance upgrade in X2.

OK - got that out of my system - Joe, it's obviously too late now, but wherever you go, I DO hope you learn from it.

MANY of us have likely lost data that we just didn't seem to take time backup.  I lost a brand new solid-state drive (512GB) and it took me more than a MONTH to reconstruct everything.  (then again, I DID have some backups - dang it - thought that was out of my system, but I guess even my attitude gets backed up).

Reality is regrettably harsh, 

Bob Bone

I'm recovering a 1tb laptop drive at the moment that went bad.. (within a year) It took 3 days to do the main bit.. hours of fun (not hehe)


but to the OP , I use 2 other products.. if you don't make backups..you will get problems along the line REGARDLESS of who makes the program.

I highly doubt that the thing isn't recoverable  in some state / form

Its probably not gone. Also, did you have autosave turned on? If not, blame yourself. 

Good point.  I myself do not use auto-save, because I like to know precisely where I was when a save took place.

What I do is to save it every time I complete a logical unit of work.  This can be a satisfactory recording take, or getting initial project setup done (tracks, synths, etc), or a group of edits - that kind of thing.

Then, if my world falls apart, I have a real good idea of where I am with things on that project.  I may also leave a note for myself, so I know where to start the next day.

I think though, that for Joe's situation, he was saying that he lost all of everything in every project, which auto-save or my in-process saves would not address.

Only regular backups  of the projects folder would have given him a complete means of recovery - to the point of whenever the backup of that folder was done.

In his case, it doesn't look like he did any such backups.

Joe - heeeeerrrre's your sign, 

Bob Bone

Auto save and every night I do work (and even when I take a break during the day) by entire projects drive is synced to my Buffalo Terra Station which is 2TB (4TB Raid 1). I do not need to do a full backup as my sync mechanism simply handles the deltas; adds new files to the backup drive and deletes removed files from the backup based on the current source drive contents.

I have (based on one or two bad experiences) have gotten into the habit of ONLY cleaning the audio folder of a specific project after the final mix is completed.

yep,  there is always a way to recover a project unless it was not saved or the hard drive crashed.

Chances are (as others have mentioned) 1) the tracks are hidden or  2)opening in safe mode will get rid of a corrupt plugin.  

The lack of info, low post count and dire state of the world makes me believe the OP is a troll and really does not want help. 

>Does this happen to Pro Tools users? Does this happen to
>Cubase users? Something tells me I had better find out.


Yep,  I ve seen that many of time.  Kinda why i use Sonar. 

A couple of months ago i was doing a project just playing with loops.  sonar crashed and ALL the audio disappeared from the project audio folder.  tried 2 file recovery programs to no avail - no traces found of them even with a surface scan.  that was weird.
  http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?&m=2552105&mpage=1

I was wrong about my redundant backup of the projects folder.  I DO keep that prior version, but ONLY until the backup of the projects folder completes.

The weekly does delta and a restore image and all of that.

Wherever this guy lands - I think he is already long gone, or at the very least pissed off at himself and the world, but anyways until he learns from things like this to heed the advice of the COUNTLESS times we are told to backup data (they even have commercials for backup sites and software during FOOTBALL games), he will continue to go through life really really angry.

I didn't have a meltdown when my lack of backups bit me BIG TIME.  I just vowed to myself that it would NOT happen again, and I implemented the steps to see that to the best of ability it does not.  Since it looks like it's everybody else's fault that this happened to him, my hunch is that he will be posting something like this in someone else's product forum.

Bob Bone

I don't use auto save. I just make sure if I've done something worth keeping I save. If I've reached a critical stage in the project like a specific track (drums tracked, guits tracked, etc) is complete or mixed or whatever I'll do a save as. I end up with a HUGE list of project versions but I can always delete them later. I've never liked auto save type stuff because I may not necessarily want to go back to the point the computer decides to save at.

@bob - damned straight.  and i'm speaking from the perspective of writing such a complex piece of code at one point that i brought down an ibm mainframe for two days. :D