Filepath/destructive editing question

[river]

Last night I copied an SDR project from a firewire drive to my D:\ drive, and created a new Tracktion project, then opened the.prj file from the D:\ drive. There were 2 takes of rhythm tracks, multiple vocal takes, etc... I deleted the set of tracks that were not going to be used, but at the end of the editing session, the client decided he wanted to use an intro section on the bass track that was deleted. I went over to the firewire drive, and it wasn't there anymore. It's no catastrophe, since I have multiple backups of the original tracks, but I didn't expect Tracktion to destructively edit files on the firewire drive, when I directed it load files from the D:\ drive. Any thoughts, any similar experiences? Thanks.

[Beno]

If you copied everything over completely, including your .prj file, then there is know way for this to happen. Tracktion has no clue where these files originated. So I imagine you must have imported the .prj file from your firewire drive which would have caused you Tracktion to refence the files on the firewire drive as well. One way to check this is to look at the files that remain in your tracktion project and see where they are referenced. But how did you delete these files, did you remove them from the edit and then delete unused media from the project? Otherwise, they shouldn't have been deleted at all as all Tracktion editing is non destructive. Simply deleting tracks in an edit should not do anything to the underlying files.
Ben

[river]

Beno, Thanks for the reply. I did copy the HDR project folder to the D:\ drive 1st, before I ever opened Tracktion. Then I created the new project & edit there, and open the .prj file from the folder in the D:\ drive, I checked the file path several times when I had a track selected. To delete the tracks from the edit, I right clicked on the track name and deleted there. Since the client wanted to comp vocals and various instruments from several takes, I didn't use the purge function on the SDR before transferring files to Tracktion. That necessitated spreading the various layers of files out and looking at their take #'s to determine which ones were the keepers. The bass track in question had an intro punch on it that is not to be found on the files on D: or firewire now, I opened them in the preview panel in the project tab, and also with a 3rd party editor......gone. (Only that intro punch though).

[Beno]

Well that makes no sense to me. It shouldn't happen. Simply deleteing the track deletes no audio whatsoever. It removes the track from your edit but it should all still be on your D drive. How it got removed from your D or Firewire Drive Makes no sense. For safety sake, if you are not working on your Firewire Drive during a session, you may want to unmount it from your PC (Mac?) just to be sure you don't accidentally reference files from it. If you can reproduce this again let me know but lets hope it was a freak occurence.
Ben

[river]

I had good intentions of unmounting the firewire drive after doing the copy, but the client showed up just then and it slipped through the cracks on me. I do have multiple copies of the original tracks, but thought this anomoly worth mentioning.