Avid Pro Tools is an industry-standard tool for music production, sound editing, and mastering. It’s built to store important data — and recreating your Pro Tools sessions can be an arduous, time-consuming process.
Even if you’re able to restore lost audio tracks from a damaged hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD), you’ll usually want the other work that went into the song: VST settings, EQs, compression, and so on. Successful recovery requires a thorough understanding of how Pro Tools sessions are structured and which data is (and isn’t) important.
At Datarecovery.com, we structure our services to meet the needs of digital media professionals — including audio engineers. We provide risk-free price quotes, and all of our services feature a no data, no charge guarantee: If we can’t restore the sessions or audio that you identify as important, there’s no fee for the attempt.
To learn more, call 1-800-237-4200 or schedule a free evaluation online. Below, we’ll discuss some of the factors that affect Pro Tools data recovery. We’ll also provide guidance for using Pro Tools’ automatic backup feature to restore work from a session lost due to a simple software crash.
Pro Tools Data Recovery: When to Call a Professional
Pro Tools sessions are complex. As we’ve discussed, you generally want more than just the audio files. Corruption can prevent you from fully restoring a lost session, and if data is accidentally deleted, operating your storage media for any amount of time could permanently overwrite your data.
If you’ve lost Pro Tools data due to a hardware failure, turn off your computer immediately. Don’t worry about going through a standard shutdown process — unplug the device. Contact a reputable data recovery provider that has experience with professional audio.
This is especially important if you’ve lost data for one of the following reasons:
- Hard drive failure.
- RAID failure or RAID rebuild issues.
- Accidental file deletion.
- File corruption, particularly when corruption occurs without an obvious cause (such as a software crash).
- Excessively slow operation.
You’ll typically have one chance to recover your Pro Tools sessions successfully. We don’t recommend at-home data recovery for that reason — if the attempt fails additional attempts have a much lower chance of restoring your files.
There’s one exception: If your storage media is fully operational and you’ve enabled automatic backups, you can usually recover from a simple software crash by using the software’s built-in utilities.
Quick Recovery from a Pro Tools Crash
Newer versions of Pro Tools create a “session file backups” folder, but only when the feature is enabled. To enable the feature:
- Head to Preferences.
- Select the Operation tab.
- Select Enable Session File Auto Backup.
- Choose appropriate backup options.
If Pro Tools crashes, but you’re 100% confident that the storage media is functional, you can attempt recovery via the software’s built-in tools. We strongly recommend creating a complete clone of your storage device prior to taking these steps, unless you haven’t lost much work — you’ll generally have one chance to recover your data, so take appropriate safeguards.
To restore from an automatic backup in Pro Tools:
- Open a new session.
- Navigate to File, then Import, then Session Data.
- Choose the most recently modified session.
- Navigate to the Session File Backups folder and select Open.
- This brings up the Import Session Data window. From here, you can change sample rates and make other tweaks to the data you import.
- Select all of the tracks that you need to import. Select all of the options under Import on the bottom-left side of the screen.
- Select OK.
This should successfully recover the lost session — though you may lose a few minutes of work, depending on how often Auto Backup runs.
Remember, backups are not technically backups if they’re stored on the same storage device as the rest of your data. Learn the best practices of data backup and have a strategy in place. We recommend keeping at least three copies of important data in separate storage locations, including one off-site copy.
Pro Tools Data Recovery Services from Datarecovery.com
For more than two decades, Datarecovery.com has provided expert solutions for music producers, mastering engineers, and recording/mastering studios. If you’ve lost data due to a hard drive failure, RAID failure, accidental deletion, or for any other reason, we recommend taking the following steps:
- Keep the storage device powered off. Do not attempt to recover the sessions with software solutions (read why we don’t recommend data recovery software).
- Write down as much information as possible about the failure. Include physical symptoms (such as whirring sounds), error messages, and any other info that could help engineers diagnose the problem.
- Write down as much information as possible about the target files for data recovery. Include session dates, approximate file sizes (if available), and file directories.
- Contact a qualified data recovery provider. Look for a company with certified cleanrooms. Read reviews and avoid companies that primarily specialize in other computer services (such as computer repair).
To schedule a free evaluation, call 1-800-237-4200 or fill out our online form.
