I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
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Cat USA
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Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:56 pm

I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Cat USA » Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:21 pm

When I highlighted a piece of audio at the beginning of the arrangement view, I also highlighted one of the most important folders on my PC and pressed backspace. Ableton gave me a warning that the folder will be moved to the "trash". Of course I pressed ok without much thought (I was already frustrated with the project I was working on). I thought I could just recover the folder from the recycling bin in my PC's directory but nothing was there. DOES ABLETON HAVE IT'S OWN TRASH DIRECTORY? because without that folder, more than half of my projects are ruined due to missing audio. I wasn't aware that Ableton can just wipe files out of existence so easily. I'm using the trial version of Ableton 10 on my windows 10 PC. I have about 28 days before my trial runs out.

Mark Williams
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Mark Williams » Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:34 pm

Are you sure its not in recycling bin, check and restore the folder. At end of the day, this isnt Abletons fault, you clicked the confirmation to trash the folder/files.
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jestermgee
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by jestermgee » Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:10 pm

Do you not have backups? Probably a good time to consider that too.

Cat USA
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Cat USA » Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:02 pm

Mark Williams wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:34 pm
Are you sure its not in recycling bin, check and restore the folder. At end of the day, this isnt Abletons fault, you clicked the confirmation to trash the folder/files.
Yep, and my file history was turned off, meaning I can't restore anything. I thought it was on this entire time! For some reason I need an external drive to turn on file history, which makes absolutely no sense. So I think that folder got wiped off my pc for good. And yes, I know it's my fault. I made a mistake like I just said in the subject. I just didn't know that Ableton could remove files from your computer.

Cat USA
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Cat USA » Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:05 pm

jestermgee wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 9:10 pm
Do you not have backups? Probably a good time to consider that too.
Yessirrrrrrrrrrr. I would restore that folder, but my file history has been turned off this entire time. I'm still kinda new to music production so I'll just take it as lesson learned.

pottering
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by pottering » Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:36 pm

People are talking about the Recycle Bin (aka "Trash"), not "file history", which is a completely different function.

Recycle Bin does not need an external drive and is always enabled by default.
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Cat USA
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Cat USA » Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:55 am

pottering wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 7:36 pm
People are talking about the Recycle Bin (aka "Trash"), not "file history", which is a completely different function.

Recycle Bin does not need an external drive and is always enabled by default.
uhh have you read anything? The problem is that the folder is not in the recycle bin, and is nowhere to be seen in my pc's files. So in order to restore the file I looked in the file history, just to see that it has been turned off.

fishmonkey
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Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by fishmonkey » Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:05 am

Cat USA wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:02 pm
Mark Williams wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:34 pm
Are you sure its not in recycling bin, check and restore the folder. At end of the day, this isnt Abletons fault, you clicked the confirmation to trash the folder/files.
Yep, and my file history was turned off, meaning I can't restore anything. I thought it was on this entire time! For some reason I need an external drive to turn on file history, which makes absolutely no sense. So I think that folder got wiped off my pc for good. And yes, I know it's my fault. I made a mistake like I just said in the subject. I just didn't know that Ableton could remove files from your computer.
Windows File History is an incremental backup system that needs to be set up with an external drive — like pretty much every backup system does. It doesn't make much sense to make backups onto the same drive since if the drive dies your backups are also toast. File History is not "turned on" by default in Windows — you need to configure it.

I don't understand how Live deleted another folder while you were in Arrangement View — how were you able to select and delete it using the Live interface?

Cat USA
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Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2021 6:56 pm

Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Cat USA » Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:49 pm

fishmonkey wrote:
Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:05 am
Cat USA wrote:
Fri Apr 02, 2021 5:02 pm
Mark Williams wrote:
Wed Mar 31, 2021 7:34 pm
Are you sure its not in recycling bin, check and restore the folder. At end of the day, this isnt Abletons fault, you clicked the confirmation to trash the folder/files.
Yep, and my file history was turned off, meaning I can't restore anything. I thought it was on this entire time! For some reason I need an external drive to turn on file history, which makes absolutely no sense. So I think that folder got wiped off my pc for good. And yes, I know it's my fault. I made a mistake like I just said in the subject. I just didn't know that Ableton could remove files from your computer.
Windows File History is an incremental backup system that needs to be set up with an external drive — like pretty much every backup system does. It doesn't make much sense to make backups onto the same drive since if the drive dies your backups are also toast. File History is not "turned on" by default in Windows — you need to configure it.

I don't understand how Live deleted another folder while you were in Arrangement View — how were you able to select and delete it using the Live interface?
Yes, exactly! That's I've been trying to say. I wiped a folder off my pc through Ableton itself. OK, try this with an empty folder: Select anything in one of your folders in Ableton (another folder or audio file) and press backspace. You'll get a message saying "Do you really want to move the selected item to the trash?". Confirming this message will send whatever it is to the void seemingly. It won't end up in the recycling bin and it will be gone in the actual file. That's why I wonder if there's anyway to recover anything that has been deleted like this. I've looked everywhere for a "trash" section/file in Ableton, but no dice.

the3ug3reeder
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Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:26 pm

Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by the3ug3reeder » Sat May 27, 2023 9:18 am

I think this might be related to a network drive?

I just did a test: Save my ableton project on a network drive, freeze a track so that audio lands in the project folder, unfreeze the track so that the audio is no longer used by the project, go to project management to locate unused files, then delete the audio file within ableton (confirming that it should be sent to the trash). You'd think that the file ends up in the trash/recycle bin but it DOES NOT!

Now, repeat precisely the same process, only this time my project is saved on my C drive. This time, after deleting the file in ableton (and confirming that it should be sent to the trash), the file actually DOES end up in the trash.

I know that trash is DISABLED on my network drive... I'm assuming that this is why the deleted audio does not appear in the trash when I delete them on my network drive. I'm also assuming that in this case, the files really are permanently deleted.

I'm running ableton live 11.3 on a windows machine.

It would be great if someone from ableton could confirm this behavior.
Also, to prevent confusion, it would be great if there was a WARNING in live BEFORE permanently deleting files.

Rivanni
Posts: 409
Joined: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by Rivanni » Sun May 28, 2023 12:38 am

It's not a specific Live thing.
If a folder on a network share is deleted and you want it in the local bin, then the whole folder needs to moved from the network share to the pc. That can be a lot of traffic and take a while.
That's why local bins are used. Even for local drives, although Windows shows this as one bin.

Regarding the warning. Live asks you for confirmation.

The great lesson here is: make regular backups using a proper backup scheme and preferably with versioning.

the3ug3reeder
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:26 pm

Re: I think I've made a horrible mistake...

Post by the3ug3reeder » Tue Jun 27, 2023 12:33 pm

Rivanni wrote:
Sun May 28, 2023 12:38 am
It's not a specific Live thing.
If a folder on a network share is deleted and you want it in the local bin, then the whole folder needs to moved from the network share to the pc. That can be a lot of traffic and take a while.
That's why local bins are used. Even for local drives, although Windows shows this as one bin.

Regarding the warning. Live asks you for confirmation.

The great lesson here is: make regular backups using a proper backup scheme and preferably with versioning.
it actually IS a specific Live thing.
Live asks you to confirm if it's ok to move elements to the trash.
This is, of course, very misleading if trash is not supported on the relevant drive.

FreeFileSync (a very practical backup software, since you mentioned it) handles this problem elegantly by simply issuing a warning:
'The recycle bin is not supported by the following folders. Deleted or overwritten files will not be able to be restored: Y:/your_session_folder '

It would be great if Live issued a similar warning instead of falsely claiming that your files will be moved to the trash.

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