How to restore lost audio files

I lost a few audio files when upgrading to Cubase 9.5 is there any way to recover audio files

Hi and welcome,

What do you mean you lost them? Are they deleted, moved? How did you discover it?

Three or four tracks were missing audio tried recover them with no luck don’t know if they were deleted on moved while upgrading to Cubase 9.5

Upgrading to Cubase 9.5 (or any version upgrade) should not have any effect on the location of any audio (or other) files.

Hi,

What happened with the files? Did they move our are they deleted from the OS, or…?

You could restore them from the OS level backups you make on a regular basis.

If you don’t do regular backups, you could consider this a fairly cheep lesson in why everyone should regularly perform backups on their computer.

FYI it cost me a huge amount of lost data to learn the lesson myself. :wink:

I really couldn’t stress this enough!! I your work is of any value, make backups!! Drives can always fail! Old, new, newer, newest SSD and M.2 drives are not above the law of physics, internal or external. All drives/storages can die at any time, also USB sticks! Yesterday, tomorrow, next week, next month or next year? Always be prepared for this. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ it happens but ‘when’ it happens? If you use a drive long enough sooner or later it’s going to fail!

SO ALWAYS MAKE BACKUPS OF THE THINGS YOU THINK YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT!

Also backing it up to an external drive might not be enough? You can back it up to 10 external drives but if they are in your home or other local facilities and they burn down you will still loose all your work!

Make an inventory of all the files you absolutely don’t want to loose and make at least 1 local backup of these. But rather consider this:

Use a Google, Microsoft or other cloud based account to make backups. That’s ‘the only’ way to make sure you can always restore them when that day comes! Make rules in software that automate this process. That way you won’t have to think about this and you’ll never forget to backup those special files!

This is absolutely true, really can’t be stressed enough.


Don’t rely on anyone else or their company alone or just an automated routine. Big companies screw up too… and if you’re not paying for it…

You need to have at least two backup pathways IMHO and I wouldn’t trust everyything to online solutions any more than I’d trust everything to DVDs/tape/hard drives. FWIW when I used to have photos that earned decent money I had three backups (at least one off-site). But make sure it’s something that works for you!

Finally once you’ve got your back-up routes set up make sure you regularly check they actually work by simulating a PC death.

Planarchist, You make things way too complicated! The days of keeping everything save ‘locally’ and actual being save are gone! Distrusting Google or Microsoft is old school. And backing up to DVD/tape ect. is all local and could be destroyed in a fire or simple corruption of media. Today’s cloud services have multiple encrypted backup arrays around the globe. So we can safely assume that if your files would get lost, it would probably mean humanity seized to exist and your music wouldn’t matter anymore anyway. :slight_smile:

Keeping it all save at home is the first option IMO (NAS, HD, DVD ect). For quickly restoring data. I do that also. But when your house burns down or the media gets corrupted it’s gone! So I would always suggest cloud services for this?

Listen, since the patriot act the US (NSA) can access almost any information on the web? But you must ask yourself if the NSA is really interested in your new songs or any data you put on there? Not really! They’re scanning for terrorist threats or maybe potential economic game changers? Be save and upload your files. You can even encrypt your files yourself before uploading if you want?

Why aren’t the NSA interested in my music? What are you saying? :slight_smile:

If distrusting Google or whoever is old school that’s because I am old school (old just about everything probably).

I’m simply saying don’t put everything in one place. Yes, use an online service but don’t use this and nothing else…because even if the NSA (we’re not all in the U.S. BTW and other agencies also exist with maybe better musical taste) aren’t secretly screwing with my wonderful tunes and turning them into muzac, sods law says the internet will be down when I need to get at it.
No one system is 100% reliable and the most unreliable bit is the human link which is why you need to check all your systems actually work.

I’m also old school, but some things you just can’t beat! By uploading your files to for instance Google you can be save to say that your files are 100% save. They have multiple storage arrays around the globe that work as raid arrays. So the chance of loosing things is about 0%. So you can safely bet on this horse! I also use a sata drive to backup stuff but I want to be more saver. If my house burns down and I survive I known I can restore my projects from the cloud.

I"m actually surprised that Steinberg never didn’t offer something like this?

Your files are not 100% safe anywhere…even Google wouldn’t claim that I think, maybe 99.999999999 but never 100% You reduce the chance of losing them completely by using multiple systems. Online remains a part of that solution for me but not the whole.

Right now the Radio Lab episode about the demise of the dinosaurs is playing. They were all gone in 2 hours after the asteroid hit.

My backups are never gonna survive that. :frowning:

:slight_smile:

Don’t forget to use the Prepare Archive function, as this moves files that are in other parts of you computer drives into the project folder. This is a common source of missing files. Every time you add a file/sample from a memory stick or another drive Cubase notes the location but does not change the location if not instructed to do so.