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Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS disk

Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2018 8:02 am
by murkf
Hi,

I have this old MacBook Pro 2011 HD (UFS) that ran Windows on the majority of the disk via Apple's BootCamp (NTFS).

When scanning this drive, I get like 100 different "recognized disks" where each must be opened individually. In addition, the original file/folder hierarchy seems to be lost and I can only open files according to a limited set of extensions. All filenames have either 8 digits appended to them or are entirely replaced by 8 digits.

Isn't there a way to open the content of all the recognized disks simultaneously, and by their original file/folder hierarchy? I need to recover some Ableton Live project files that were located in my Windows desktop folder. Each Ableton Live project consists of an .als file and "Samples/Imported/*.wav" and/or "Samples/Cropped/*.wav". So far I've been unable to find any Ableton project files under "Recognized > Multimedia Audio" or "Recognized > Other files". I did find a bunch of .wav files but I can't do much without their file names.

Should I just give up at this point?

Many thanks!

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 6:45 am
by Alt
The first question: what did happen with the data?

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:26 am
by murkf
Hi,

The MacBook Pro 2011 got water damaged, however the 500GB Serial ATA hard drive was fine so it was removed from the laptop and encased in an Icy Box USB cabinet, where it worked fine being connected to my new laptop's USB the first 5-10 times. I'm guessing it reacted badly to being removed from its mothership and treated as a portable; that is, turned on and off (plugged in and out) faster than it could handle?

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 9:31 am
by Alt
Maybe, it was damaged during improper disconnection?
This article may help: Data Recovery from an External Disk with a Damaged File System. The most important part is the description of various recognized partitions.
Here is another reading on this problem: Data Recovery Using R-Studio.

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:02 am
by murkf
> Maybe, it was damaged during improper disconnection?

Looks like it, yup.

> This article may help: Data Recovery from an External Disk with a Damaged File System. The most important part is the description of various recognized partitions.
> Here is another reading on this problem: Data Recovery Using R-Studio.

Nice read, however I had hoped there was a way to fix the part that got messed up due to the improper disconnect. The only takeaway I got from these was that I can rescan specifically for Ableton Live project files (.als). Unfortunately, I don't see a way to also locate each Live project's "Samples" folder and their respective .wav files as then I would have to manually go through ALL the .wav files found on the disk and try to guess which of them belongs to which Live project.

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 2:07 pm
by Alt
Maybe, you can post the screenshot of the Drives panel with all found partitions.

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 5:54 am
by murkf
There are over 500 recognized drives. Do you want me to screenshot each of them individually, or perhaps there's an "export scan info to text file" type of function I could use? Or maybe I could send you the .scn file itself?

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 11:46 am
by Alt
Well, 500+ recognized partitions is impressive.
This help part describes how to tell which partitions are worth looking at: Data Recovery Using R-Studio.
How many are green partitions>

Re: Where'd my original file names and folder hierarchy go? Trying to restore Ableton Live projects from old UFS/NTFS di

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 8:32 am
by murkf
Greetings!

Sorry didn't get your notification there. However, just now I made a last attempt before giving up and formatting the drive, so I opened one of the large green NTFS partitions and lo and behold I found the drive I was looking for, with the original file names and folder hierarchy (whatever the right term for that is) :D

I was also able to find my long lost Ableton Live projects and the recovery was successful as well, so I owe you a HUUUUUUGE THANKS!!! :lol:

Have a great weekend!

All the best,
Murk