Deleting .asd files inadvertently deleted all exported audio

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Good_Notelba
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Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2022 6:11 am

Deleting .asd files inadvertently deleted all exported audio

Post by Good_Notelba » Thu Nov 03, 2022 7:48 am

My problem: After deleting *some* .asd files, it has caused *all* the exported files that were associated with the project session to be deleted. Ableton Live 11, running Windows 10.

Sometimes I use Ableton for quick basic audio editing, where I drop in an audio sample and do little more than make small trims and adjust fades, and then export in whichever the needed file types. While this can take just a few minutes per track, sometimes this is done at volume for a few dozen tracks in an album. So the process: load in a sample > edit > export > delete inserted sample > load new sample > edit > export > delete inserted sample > repeat. I have not been saving a dedicated Live project for this since the purpose is to simply make quick edits that I figured didn't require a permanent project workspace for audio that would be ready and exported in moments. Perhaps this was a mistake.

To explain the situation experienced today:

The original audio files fortunately remain intact. As is normal, an .asd file is created automatically when audio is added to Ableton, next to the original file. In the (main) folder where the original files and generated .asd files are stored, alongside is another (export) folder where I had put the edited audio (.mp3 in this instance). I was close to finishing preparing the edited album and I decided to (permanently) delete some .asd files, the ones associated with the audio I had already edited and exported. Surely the .asd files weren't needed anymore as I had already produced new files from the originals and wouldn't return to make further edits to export again. However, deleting about 1/3 of the .asd files in the (main) folder resulted in all the exported audio files inside the (export) folder seemingly also getting deleted, including the exported files whose associated .asd files were not deleted. The (export) folder remains, but is now empty.

The fact that not some but all of the exported audio is now gone is baffling. Is there some intrinsic link that exported files have with .asd files? I sure didn't expect that deleting one file would simultaneously delete multiple others, in a different folder and of a different type. And as it turns out, this had happened previously, but I had deleted .asd files after completion of the work and didn't notice that those exports had been subsequently deleted as a result.


Fortunately none of this is critical data loss to me so I'd consider myself lucky it hadn't happened during a serious project (where out of greater caution I had yet to decide to delete any .asd files). While I'll be making immediate backups of exports from now on and saving Live projects for these kinds of editing workspaces, if anyone can explain what might be happening here, it'll certainly be helpful to make better sense of all this.

And some questions: Is it ever safe to delete .asd files? Are .asd files critical to keep if no Live project is currently saved? Perhaps should I disable .asd files being created, at least during quick editing work such as described?

Thanks in advance.

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