Acoustica User Forums

One of my projects it's corrupted, luckly I managed to save it thanks to Mixcraft's automatic backups. So...

What corrupts a project and how can I prevent it?

It could be anything from the computer trying to write to a damaged filespace (e.g. there's a bad spot on your hard disk drive) to a power failure in some random computer component that prevents the file from being written properly.

Honestly, I don't know what really causes corrupted files, the reason can change between incidents.

Like Anorax said, there are many causes for these corruptions, and almost impossible to guard against entirely.

If it is happening to you a lot, there are various diagnostics you can run to test your components (hard drive, ram, etc).

If you live in a dwelling with old wiring, power fluctuations can be a problem. In this case, a good power conditioner can help. (Don't go super-cheap on this. Furman makes some good units, but they can be expensive. I haven't looked at the computer-supply end of this --- UPS'es and the like, which might do the trick more economically).

Does anybody run chkdsk anymore? I haven't done it in years, but then again, I haven't been getting corrupted files.

Thanks a lot guys!

Acoustica Greg wrote:Does anybody run chkdsk anymore? I haven't done it in years, but then again, I haven't been getting corrupted files.

It's been about two years since my last corrupted file. I'll have to keep that in mind if I have corruption problems in the future.

What's really fun is when your original file, as well as every single automatic backup, gets corrupted. Nothing better.

Luckily, that's a rare occurrence. I'd sure like to know how that even happens.

Happened a while back with a project I was working on with Mixcraft 7. Got about five hours into the session, things going along excellently, saving often, etc. Came back the next day to find every backup file after a certain time to be a tidy 227kb corrupted file; the original file would only open up as a corrupted file. Somehow it was saving corrupted backups while still allowing me to edit the original project without issue. The only thing I could think of is that somehow the directory itself was corrupted while working in the original session (although all the audio files from the MIDI-majority project seem to be just fine). Still miffed I can't recover that project, I was definitely proud of the progress I had made.

Recently had an issue where a project could no longer operate (consistent crashes after a certain progress point, including crashing during loading), but I wasn't getting a "corrupted file" error so that was a bit different, I think.

Anorax wrote:Happened a while back with a project I was working on with Mixcraft 7. Got about five hours into the session, things going along excellently, saving often, etc. Came back the next day to find every backup file after a certain time to be a tidy 227kb corrupted file; the original file would only open up as a corrupted file. The only thing I could think of is that somehow the directory itself was corrupted while working in the original session . Still miffed I can't recover that project, I was definitely proud of the progress I had made.

I recall suffering with that problem either last year or the start of this one. Several 45kb files were created one day. I couldn't figure it out

Anorax wrote:Recently had an issue where a project could no longer operate (consistent crashes after a certain progress point, including crashing during loading), but I wasn't getting a "corrupted file" error so that was a bit different, I think.

I still get that problem regularly. It seems to be down to whether Core Audio or ASIO is selected. If the file won't open with one it usually opens with the other. Worth trying to remember. It doesn't seem to be relevant which was used when the file was worked on previously either, so you have to bear this in mind and just remember to try it. After the file is loaded it is of course possible to change the system used if you need to, though the problem will likely recur when you next try to load the file.