MrNatch3L - Posted - 03/20/2011:  10:49:28

I've posted this problem on Apple forums and hope to heck I can find out what's wrong. Meantime, if there are any GarageBand users here I want to warn you about what I ran into this past few days.

Sometime last week I downloaded the latest update for Mac OS X, and later I ran a permissions repair with Disk Utility a a recommended cure for my CD-DVD drive of not burning data. It fixed that, but I almost wish it hadn't. Last night I went into my studio to redo the acoustic guitar track on a new song project that WAS almost done (and consequently hadn't been backed up yet....)

I did a couple of record operations to set the mic input levels on my Presonus audio box. So far all seemed normal. Then hit Record to lay down the track. I got 2 error messages, something about Error Code 38, followed by driver returning error code 43. Real useful stuff.

I shut down GB without saving, thinking I'd reopen the saved state of my song and start over. But when I reopened it, all the sound data for all the real instrument tracks was gone. Like 12 hours of recording and mixing down. I couldn't believe it.

I restarted the whole computer, got the same result when I opened the .band file... tracks all present in the interface, but the wave forms are straight lines, and there's no sound on any real instrument track. Software instruments were still there. I then made the mistake of opening a couple of other song projects (fortunately backed up) trying to see if it was something peculiar to that project. The projects opened OK, but if I recorded anything, software or real instrument, the aiff files that store the sound data for all real instrument tracks inside the .band package file were GONE. Wiped out. Not even sent to Trash.

I don't know if this is somehow related to the recent update . Maybe my Presonus drivers don't work anymore?. Or maybe to the permissions repair operation? No clue. If this were Windows I'd say I'd picked up a virus. (Not toally ruling that out 'cause this data loss and the previous silent changing of permissions sure smack of malware).

I have no clue what to do. My whole recording life is dead in the water. I have a huge investment of time in GarageBand (09) recording and I'm hosed. I hope the Apple forums will be able to help.

What I want to do here is warn any GarageBand users... back up your stuff NOW! if you haven't. If you're keeping your Mac system updated, and this is somehow related to the update (it might be... there's a thread on Apple about GB 11 users having the same problem), you could be in for a nasty surprise next time you open a GB project and try to record.

If any Mac/GB folks out there might have a clue what I can do to fix this please! I'm up the s*** creek with no paddle right now.

Fishrrman - Posted - 03/23/2011:  19:37:49

Some thoughts, in no particular order...

The Firebox uses the "CORE audio drivers" that are built into the Mac OS. I don't think the Firebox has any "drivers" of its own. At least when I was using one, it didn't.

RE:
"I then made the mistake of opening a couple of other song projects (fortunately backed up) trying to see if it was something peculiar to that project. The projects opened OK, but if I recorded anything, software or real instrument, the aiff files that store the sound data for all real instrument tracks inside the .band package file were GONE. Wiped out. Not even sent to Trash."

Have you tried doing a search using spotlight and ".aif" as your search string? Does it produce any results?

There is also a search utility called "Easyfind" that you can download that may help in searching for lost files. Again, I'd ask it to search for files with the ".aif" extension.

Have you tried starting a new project for test purposes, just to see if you can set it up, record, and play back?

If the Apple forum has reports from other users that have had the same experiences as you had, that would indicate it probably isn't any mistake that you made. That doesn't help when you've lost data, of course.

On my iMac, I've got the hard drive partitioned into several volumes. I keep a larger one for my System software, applications, etc.

I have a couple of small "project partitions", each about 6+ gig in size. This makes it easy to defrag them as the project moves along. I like the idea of having these files "separated" from everything else.

As far as backup goes, I generally do one project at a time, and back it up to a USB flash drive. Flash drives are cheap enough now so that you could buy one big enough to backup several small projects at once, or one or two larger ones.

I also have a larger partition for storing completed projects, but they generally are just archives and aren't "worked on" there (that's what the project partitions are for).

You might also consider buying an external hard drive to backup things to (not only projects, but your system software as well. Again, you can partition an external drive and use something like the free CarbonCopyCloner to create "dupes" of your main drive.

Another solution (that Iike even better) is to get something like this:
amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?ur...k&x=0&y=0
.... and one or more "bare" drives.
With a dock, you can "swap drives" and don't need several external enclosures. You can even boot from a docked drive.

It's _possible_ that some of the project files are still on the disk media, even if the file system doesn't see them anymore. There is data recovery software out there that can sometimes reclaim them, but this is less likely if you're still using the drive the lost files are on. You might try downloading the free demo of "DataRescue3" (or Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery) and let it scan your drive. Again, see if you can set it up to scan for ".aif" files.

- John