Live 9.1 Install Erased All My Saved Sets

[SpeedKing]

Guys...I think I know the answer to this (and I feel like I'm about to vomit), but I had my live set save folder in the /ProgramData/Ableton/Live 9 Suite folder. In other words, I took where Live 9 installed itself back earlier this year when I bought it, and I just made a new subfolder there for all of my live sets/samples from the past 2.5 years.

When I went to install 9.1 just a few minutes ago, I chose the 'overwrite' option. It found the previous installation directory, and I figured this would overwrite any files that were new or that superceded the old Live 9 file. However, it appears now that it just deletes everything within the install folder and then installs a fresh install.

In hindsight, I can see how this makes sense for a program to update this way. But I figured since none of the .01, .02 etc. updates ever DELETED anything from the installation directory, this wouldn't either.

Now though, every single live set and sample is gone. And it's not just dumped into the recycle bin either and easily recovered. I think it's gone for good... I've tried to run Recuva (a data recovery program) and it is coming up empty.

I know this is my own fault. I have been building computers for 15 years, doing light C+ and VB programming for years, been a computer nerd for 1.5 decades now, so I feel like I should have thought about this....but I just didn't. I can't believe it. Literally ~2.5 years of files (except for ~10 completed tracks I saved as .wav files) I think are lost.

Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions/magic/voodoo they can recommend? Is there any trick while my computer is still on that someone, someway, there is an "Undo" for the Ableton 9.1 install and it undeletes the personal files I had saved in there? Btw, I never did 'get around to' backing up my saved files onto another disk. Somehow one week turns into 40 which turns into 100 weeks of putting it off. And I don't have the partition that I have Ableton on as part of the Windows Restore folders, so that's not an option either.

[Angstrom]

are you on Windows ?
Do you have System Restore on that drive?

[SpeedKing]

are you on Windows ?
Do you have System Restore on that drive?

Unfortunately not... It's a random partition on one of my few hard drives. I never did set Windows restore to be active on that drive. Thinking back, being that I never got around to actually backing up my live sets, and never did set Widows restore on this drive...I almost can't believe myself. I feel like this is a dreamworld right now. Like, there HAS to be a solution here. All those files, they just can't be gone, like there HAS to be something I'm not seeing or thinking about here.

[SpeedKing]

All I have now is Ableton 9.1 displaying some cached file of all my recent sets I've worked on in the last X days....greyed out because they're unavailable. This greyed out text is the last I have of so many songs...so many hours... Fuuuuu............

[fishmonkey]

not having backups is completely daft.

anyway, while there is the still the possibility of data recovery you should stop using that drive, to avoid any more data being written on it.

and, i would boot off another drive and use a cloning program that does device level copies to make a verbatim copy of the drive for data recovery purposes...

[ark]

Something doesn't seem right here. On Windows, the default install location for live is C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 9\. Did you really have your Live sets stored there? Because that's an odd place to store them.

What I'm hoping is that they're really stored somewhere else and for some reason Live has become confused about the location.

[ark]

One more thought: If you launch Live and immediately execute File -> Save Live set as..., what folder does it put you in?

[SpeedKing]

Something doesn't seem right here. On Windows, the default install location for live is C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 9\. Did you really have your Live sets stored there? Because that's an odd place to store them.

What I'm hoping is that they're really stored somewhere else and for some reason Live has become confused about the location.

Well I changed it from my C drive to another partition, but yeah, all the Ableton install folders are the same where I have them. And yeeahhh, it is an odd place I guess. And yeah, I did have them store there.

And as to your other post, when I went to file "Save As", that was what tipped me off to the problem because it didn't have a default path when I did that for the first time for Live 9.1. Thank you for the thoughts/suggestions though. I do appreciate it.

And yeah, I have confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that all my files are gone. I've run three separate data recovery programs now, and nothing except a few random samples is able to be salvaged. I went to bed feeling like I wanted to say "eff it" and just not worry about any music DAWs/extentions/add ons ever again. But that quickly faded this morning by like 11am when I was already starting a new project. Now I've just accepted it, with a "brand new beginnings" kind of attitude. I still get depressed when I think about all the stuff I've lost, but there's literally nothing that can be done about it, so I just have to think "what is the best way forward from here", and it's just to kick the dust off and get on with everything with as good of an attitude as I can muster.

All I can say is that IF anyone has their Live Sets folder within a subfolder in the Ableton installation directory, please remove them. Not sure if I'm the only idiot that did that, but please, for the love of God, don't choose the "overwrite" for the 9.1 upgrade. It won't just update the folders with new files, but it deletes the entire installation directory first.

[tedlogan]

Cloud services greatly reduce this accidental idiocy. I've been this idiot myself. Link your projects folder to an online folder and you are forever saved by the blood of unrecallness.

[eb0687]

Cloud services greatly reduce this accidental idiocy. I've been this idiot myself. Link your projects folder to an online folder and you are forever saved by the blood of unrecallness.

Would you mind explaining how that is done? or linking me to some sort of instruction regarding the same. Thanks

[tedlogan]

Cloud services greatly reduce this accidental idiocy. I've been this idiot myself. Link your projects folder to an online folder and you are forever saved by the blood of unrecallness.

Would you mind explaining how that is done? or linking me to some sort of instruction regarding the same. Thanks

Sure, it's quite easy, and there are numerous hosts out there, some free up to a certain amount of space, others paid for etc. I use a google account (gmail, spreadsheets, youtube etc) which is linked to Google Drive. You get 15GB free, and if you download it will explain how everything works. Basically, you have an actual folder on your hard drive which is linked to your online space. Anything you put in there automatically gets uploaded to your cloud online. I have my project folder inside the Google Drive folder, so whenever I overwrite an old set, or make changes etc, it automatically saves the changes online as well. It's almost impossible to lose your sets this way.

I also use Live on a laptop, also linked to Google Drive, so it's all synched all the time. Bear in mind that once you make changes on the laptop, it will update online, and thus also on your desktop. So My desktop, my laptop, and online are all constantly updating if anything changes. Works superbly for me.

My projects folder is over 15 GB, but 6 of those GBs are abandoned sets. So I'm only using around 9GB so far.

Hope this helps.

[Broomptish]

Maybe a stupid question but set up the google thing last night, now I go to ableton and my tracks are greyed out im wondering how do I tell ableton that I moved them to google drive cheers

[Broomptish]

Duh stupid question indeed just open it from there lol though when I open it it says the files you have recently removed have been sent to google bin, ok?? i clicked undo, file still opened