Disaster!!!

[thomasross20]

I've been working on an album for YEARS and I tried to open Tracktion today and it keeps asking me for registration details etc! So I register and then all my open projects are gone. I load one, and the audio files are all blanked out.

-> How do I get the audio files to "unblank?" If I click on source file, they're there and I can hear them... just not in an active track.

-> Why does it keep asking me to register!?

Not sure why this is happening but it is worrying. Only thing new I've done is try and sync it with Google Drive.........

Thanks!

[thomasross20]

It also says about not being able to create a temp directory and that I have to set it up.
WHat on earth is going on :s

[jonljacobi]

How did you sync it? Does Google Drive have a lock on that folder? Is it trying to sync the files in real time? I’d shy away from this method of backup for now. And you do have local backups, right?

[thomasross20]

I do have local backups, thank heavens.
I just right click on the folder and it has the option to sync.
NEVER AGAIN.
I restarted my computer after "de-syncing..." I've since only had to register once, load all my files and VSTs again and it's ok (I've not checked every project, though...). The audio files are also now appearing.

What a nightmare ~10 years worth of work in the balance there (of course have a local copy but I only do that every 3 months as there's a lot of data).

I don't recommend syncing to anybody!!

[schpaeckulum]

Don't worry, you're not going to lose your tracks. This issue is solvable. Just sort the registration.

[fromwithin]

I don't trust any of the auto-sync cloud programs. I've had bad experiences of various degrees with every one of them. Nowadays I use box.com because it has an app that lets you use it like a normal folder on your computer and I copy to and from manually. Google Drive only has that if you pay for GSuite.

[midklang]

... but I only do that every 3 months as there's a lot of data ...

Sorry to say it in this way and I don't want to sound harsh, but BackUp is to do on daily basis keeping some versions of the older BackUps.
The good thing is: you seem not to have lost something and you have learned that lesson.
There are lots of tools to do this task.
My favourite:
https://freefilesync.org/

horst

[jabe]

I'm a former IT professional and I think the idea of keeping one's data in the cloud is utterly mental. I've never seen any advantage to this syncing either. Someone I know did it and decades of photos from her laptop and desktop PCs suddenly appeared on her phone causing no end of problems.

[thomasross20]

Thanks, all

[Peter Widdicombe]

Thanks for the reminder. I just realized I hadn't done backups since January... And the FreeFileSync is much prettier than just doing simple directory drag'n'drop !

[DavidPardy]

Hi mate, I feel your pain of feeling you've lost important files for good! I once lost some files and found them about 5 years later on an old hard drive. Thousands of photos. You can imagine my relief!

I use Tonido as a self-hosted "cloud" storage server. It runs on my main computer, and is routed to a port on my modem. I use freedns.afraid.org to get a free domain name which I use along with the routed port to access from both my Android phone and my laptop. This allows me to copy files directly to and from anywhere I want.

Because I have a dynamic IP address I also run a batch file from Windows Task Scheduler, which executes a command-line task to automatically update the DNS server with the current IP address every two hours. This isn't a problem with a static IP address.

I also use Duplicati for scheduling local backups to an external backup drive.

In your scenario, you may be better off doing Cloud Sync with your backups rather than the 'live' folder.

The other thing I do is I have a "Google Drive" folder which automatically synchronises with my online Google Drive. You need to download the "Backup and Restore" software from Google, and I use this without any trouble - but it's probably not the safest way.