I just screwed up bad..... (Reaper HELP!)

bryan_kilco

bryan_kilco

Member
Nov 22, 2007
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Poconos, PA
EDIT: Not sure if this is the correct section of the forum for this post, so I apologize if it should be somewhere else.

Ok, so I recently backed up a LOT of stuff from my laptop (about 150GB) worth of impulses, movies, plugins, and most importantly Reaper files.

Everything seemed fine. Wiped the HD clean, then went into the external HD to restore the important stuff I needed, only to discover that I dont have 98% of the .wav files needed for my saved projects.

The project folders contain the RPP file....but no .wav files. Only a SELECT FEW folders in my main "Reaper Files" directory actually contain the RPP and wav files. Some of which only contain small parts of the tracks (i.e. the first chunk of a track is missing (OFFLINE/blank track), then there is a split, and the second chunk is there.

In short - I must have been clumsy and missed a special folder where Reaper was saving all the wavs laveled "stem-2-1008-100223" ect.....

I tried taking ALL the Reaper backup files off my external and put them on my computer, thinking maybe the files are just all jumbled in the main folder, yet no luck.

I just lost about 3-4 years worth of recordings and freestyle stuff....lots of little bits and pieces of songs/riffs that I wanted to use.

FML. :mad:
 
Couple weeks ago I lost almost 300gb of projects,samples,impulses,stuff related to music production then music,images,movies and stuff I was collecting for more than 6 years.If you formatted the HDD or partition there's no way or very very small chance to get them back!
 
Yea, I figured I'm fucked. I was just soooo worried of this happening, and having to go thru all the cluttered shit on my comp...ugh. I bet it was under Program Files/Reaper/Projects or Temp or something where all those wavs were saved....but I normally save each project into their own respective folders. Sometimes, say Im recording our band practice, I'll just save the project file in the Reaper Files directory and then just go back and open the RPP and boom, everything works great....I just dont understand how THAT much stuff could have been stored in some other folder that I was unaware of. At least it was all home recordings/demos/riffs and nothing majory important like a bands EP or something, but still.....so many cool ideas just sorta thrown out.

I WILL be more organized this time around. I just wish that Reaper would save/render the track "KICK" instead of "reaper-stem-kick-01-2300-23"....it would make things a lot easier when trying to sort thru the shit I dont want.
 
All of that stuff gets kept in My Documents I think, in the reaper folder, at least thats where mine gets kept, it sucks man, I've deleted a lot of my stuff before as well by mistake because of Reaper and all the stupid files it makes.
 
Yeah, it sounds like you might be pretty screwed if you've already formatted the HDD. Sorry to hear it, man. I had a hard drive crash a year or so ago and it was a miserable experience. I lost about 5 years worth of everything that I had ever done. I came very close to actually throwing up it made me so sick. I was able to recover a lot of data but it re-named ALL of my .wav files with WAV00001, WAV00002, etc,... 32 folders worth, with each folder containing 1,000 files. To this day, I'm still sorting through them. Now I understand the importance of redundant backups.
 
It just irks me because I backed the files up (or so I thought...) and even checked mulitple times a day to make sure I had everything before wiping the HDD. I did have a folder named Reaper Files under Documents....figured everything would basically be in there. I also noticed, sometimes Reaper will direct me to a weird folder to save projects...such as FL Studio.... and more than once I've just hit render or save, not realizing where the files were going....

at least I backed up most of my other stuff. It's just all the old, shitty recordings with decent riffs on them that I really wanted.

and this stumps me....I recorded my band a few months back. a SHITLOAD of project files, because I'd re-mix and re-mix and re-mix again after I was raging drunk and thought I was getting it better and better each time. So, a shitton of project files are saved on the external. NO .wavs that I see that belong to any of these sessions are in there, yet those projects open and play the DI tracks/drums, etc. Wtf?!?!
 
I would recommend creating an entire folder (or partition even) on your internal drive dedicated solely to audio. I named mine, "Studio". Everything I ever do is in this folder. Then get an external HDD and some free backup software (there's plenty out there) and schedule it to back up to the external each night at like 2 am or something. Worst case scenario, your internal goes bad and you've lost only a few hours of work.
 
Does reaper have a function like disk allocation in PT??? EVERY file that you need for a session should be kept in the session folder. If you're moving stuff around, it's pretty important to keep all the files for a particular session in one spot. I would check to see if Reaper allows you to change the target folders for each project, and make sure all the necessary files for each project are contained within that 'project folder', and not jumbled in some random folder somewhere.

You should try to be more organized with your file system. I've been payed many times by musicians who are super un-organized and keep losing files because they don't allocate all their session data to specific folders...
 
wow... that really sucks man! ... i feel your pain.

this has never happend to me (in the 13 years i have been involved in this industry).

i fear the day.
 
It happened to me once. Since then, New Project/File/Project Settings/Path to save media file

Or even easier: New folder/Save RPP (inside the folder)

It works like tits:worship:
 
Yeaaaah make sure you are setting a path for the audio files and make sure you save each project before you start recording. Otherwise Reaper will save the audio files in the My Documents/REAPER Media folder or whatever it is because it doesn't have anywhere else to put it since you haven't saved the project and given it it's own space...

Do this:
audiopath.png


...then as long as you ALWAYS save the project before you start recording, all of your shit will go in a folder called "Audio Files" specific to that project in the project folder...
 
Haven´t read all the replies, but here´s what you need to do:

1. Stop using the formated HD. Your deleted data still exists unless you write new stuff on the HD. In this case the file will be corrupted or gone forever. Otherwise it is just "hidden".
2. Install the software GetDataBack on another computer
3. Plug the HD you want to salvage on this computer and follow the GetDataBack instructions to have access to the "deleted" data.
4. Save the data you want. Good luck!

ps: Always remind of checking the "move media to project folder" (or something like that) box when you´re saving projects on Reaper to shit like this don´t happen again. Plugins that render stuff like Melodyne also need extra atention on this matter.
 
dude happend to me too i used a shit ton of programs like recova i got some of it back but thats all i got
 
Without trying to be a dick, this is exactly the reason I:

1. Don't install applications to any other drive than the system.
2. Don't record audio to any other drive than a dedicated drive for audio recording.
3. Don't keep ANYTHING on my system drive other than applications and OS files.

If I want to wipe my OS drive and re-install it, I can just do that... safe in the knowledge that everything else that I need to keep is on separate drives.

Oh and the reason I don't install my app's to other drives like other people do, is I feel it creates a false sense of security.
 
drew_drummer said:
Without trying to be a dick, this is exactly the reason I:

1. Don't install applications to any other drive than the system.
2. Don't record audio to any other drive than a dedicated drive for audio recording.
3. Don't keep ANYTHING on my system drive other than applications and OS files.

If I want to wipe my OS drive and re-install it, I can just do that... safe in the knowledge that everything else that I need to keep is on separate drives.

Oh and the reason I don't install my app's to other drives like other people do, is I feel it creates a false sense of security.
Click to expand...

Same here. This has saved me a lot of trouble on a few re-installs of my OS.
 
Kinda late, but if you didn't write in the formatted disk you can recover probably 99% of it. Get some software like Get Data Back or Recuva and give it a go.

Also, don't copy/paste stuff, that's pretty much the unsafest way. Get Puresync and use it to compare and sync folders.
 
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