Recovery Of .cwp Files

[Annabelle]

Hi, it's Annabelle.

I know this might sound like a strange request, but here goes. I have this hard drive that I'm going to send to Drivesavers in Novato, California, and I've let them know that there are Cakewalk Projects on there that I didn't get the chance to back up. These Cakewalk projects, as you might know, have the extension .cwp. I've tried ICare Data Recovery Pro, but it seems to bring them back in sequential fragments, 46 of them for each project. If I send this drive to Drivesavers, would they be able to recover the files intact? If not, can somebody tell me the best way I can recover Cakewalk Projects, and put them back together if they're in fragments like these ones are? Drivesavers did say that they could recover .wav files, which are also included on this drive, but they tell me that things like .cwp are proprietary formats. Now I'm confused!

?

Yes, the drive is able to be accessed by my computer. I haven't written anything new to this drive since 2018, yet the files I'm trying to recover were discovered on there from 2015 and earlier. Are there any applications that can be used to join fragmented files and merge them into one? Would I have to use a hex editor to write missing headers? If so, which one is best with JAWS? Also, this seems rather strange, but the drive I have seems to only show half its capacity. It's a 1TB hard drive, but only seems to think it's 500 GB. Could that have resulted when my apartment complex recently experienced a loss of power? Drivesavers has been in the business since 1985. Their website is https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com. I love the fact that the representatives there are friendly, and they seem to have an "It's all about the customer" attitude. The most recent incident happened with another hard drive on my music machine. When I woke up Friday morning, May 27, 2022, I thought I was dreaming when suddenly, I heard it! My samples hard drive, the one with all my virtual instruments on it, suddenly started flashing on and off, and after a few repetitions of that cycle, it shut off completely! Now the samples drive isn't even connecting to my machine. Stranger still, the model number, which I don't remember all of it, but it usually starts with "ST31000", now displays as a number that starts with "STM13". How did this happen? We actually lost power in my apartment complex that day, so I wonder if that may have shorted out the power in this hard drive. I'm hoping I can still retrieve the samples off of there before it possibly goes belly up! It's amazing that that particular hard drive has been with me since the day I got my music machine, September 2, 2011! I've just recently purchased a new 6 TB Western Digital Black hard drive from B&H Photo And Video in New York City for $159.99! Now all I have to do is wait for Markus to come over and help me with makin' the switcharoo when the time comes that he's available to help me put it in. If I can't retrieve the samples myself, which I'm sure most folks will say is not a good idea if there's possible mechanical failure, I'm sendin' the drive in to Drivesavers! Mark gave me a quote that the price will be between $700 and $3900! Sure that's spendy, but it's worth it for me, as a few of the samples on there are ones I've made, and some of the instruments are ones I customized. If Drivesavers can save an entire series of episodes of "The Simpsons" as well as an entire series of raw sessions from an album by The Rolling Stones, surely they can help to save my precious files, some of which aren't exactly replaceable! I hope the noises my hard drives make are not a sign of data damage or mechanical failure. If they are, what shall I do next? If the folks at Drivesavers are able to save every single "lost" file I have, for the love of San Francisco that will be my dancin' day! Then I'll be makin' music like never before! My sight challenged friend, Glenn, who actually builds computers (I know, you might say that's impossible when you can't see), says that the sound my hard drive is making, from the attachment I'm providing you in this email, is the sound of stuck heads. He tried to suggest that I put it in the freezer, but I don't think that's a good idea, as it could possibly introduce condensation in the machine, even if it's in an antistatic bag. What shall I do next? Here's an example of the actual sound from my actual hard drive. I recorded this with my Olympus LS100 field recorder next to my computer, while restarting the machine from a shutoff state. Listen to this and tell me if you think this is mechanical failure that could lead to data loss.

[John Vere]

I saw this a few hours ago and really didn’t have any answers to your problem other than the usual wagging a finger at you and asking why you don’t have back ups.  
 

We all learn the hard way when it comes to digital storage but it has been a few decades now and most of us don’t trust a hard drive any more than we trust the government to do its job. 

A few thoughts to ponder. Larger spinning hard drives are more likely to die. Thumb drives , SSD drives and DVDs have no moving parts, Think about that.
The cloud is mostly free or cheap and possibly won’t die on you. 

Cakewalks CWP file when opened looks for your audio files in the location it last was saved. As long as that pathway has not become corrupted they should open. If not you are always faced with a nightmare of re assembly. 

Most of the work we put into our compositions might be Midi. You can save any projects as midi files which are then 100% bullet proof and can be opened in any DAW.  
Audio tracks are usually named but could have been scattered across the timeline in a zillion  locations therefore I always recommend backing up those as Stems that are full tracks. Not small clips. 
 

it goes on and on but I personally have never lost a project because of the steps I have taken for a long time now to back myself up in as many ways as possible.

I’m just working on a project for a client today and after only one day of work it is now in 4 locations. 

The working copy on my 250 GB data drive 

The local backup to a third SSD drive 

A portable drive 

A midi file on One Drive 

I do this before shutting down at end of day, a good habit to have. 
I have Cakewalk files and midi files on probably 10 storage drives and all still open. I never leave a hard drive in a computer for more than 5 years but now I’m not sure about these SSD drives? So far so good 

[sjoens]

I lost a lot of audio clips on a damaged HDD that the recovery service was unable to recover. They are good at what they do but there's no guarantee with data recovery.

If you have this done I would keep the recovery HDD as a backup and upgrade the main drive to Solid State. Like John said, it has no moving parts to damage itself with.

Even good HDDs and floppy disks can fail over time just from age.

[Craig Anderton]

Also remember that everything has a failure mode. You can usually count on DVDs or Blu-Ray (which I prefer) for 5 years if stored properly, but they don't last forever. Flash drives and SSDs have redundancy built in because they're constantly deteriorating, and over time, they will fail. Hard drives can last for 10 or more years - if they don't fail in the first six months. Linear tape is still the preferred backup medium for most large companies, supplemented by the cloud.

The to key to storage is the same as investing: a diversified portfolio    If you have data on a hard drive, an SSD, the cloud, and a Blu-Ray in a bank's safe deposit box, hopefully you're covered. 

[John Vere]

I used to replace my drives every 2 or 3 years starting back in 2002. Not only for safety but drives were getting bigger and better very quickly back then. I still have some of those and they still spin up.

I have a pile of around 15 drives that all still work. I think if you retire them early they seem to remain stable for ever.
I only just now retired a 120 GB SSD. It was in my wife’s laptop. Just swap it out and keep it just in case.

I’m overdue to upgrade my main DAWs 5 year old OS drive ( 250 SSD) but none of my data is stored on it .
My Data drive with all my projects on it (500GB SSD) is new.

The second data drive(1 TB standard)  used for back ups is probably 5 years old but it doesn’t spin up unless I’m copying something to or from it so I’m not worried about it. 
Then I have a couple of external drives that I dump my entire data drive to from time to time. 
Not only that but I have a second office computer that is more or less a clone of my main DAW complete with backups and all my software and licences etc. 

I just spent 10 hour on a project I’m being paid to finish for a client. I can not afford to loose it. 
And it was a song we recorded in 2005 which guess what- I had the audio file from the master. In my data drive. 
 

Edited July 6, 2022 by John Vere

[Byron Dickens]

Let this be a lesson to everyone who sees this.

[John Vere]

12 minutes ago, bdickens said:

Let this be a lesson to everyone who sees this.

Exactly why I did reply. Sadly it is not what the OP wanted to hear but threads like this might reach others who still have time to save their butts. 

[57Gregy]

So, I guess the answer is no? ?

[Annabelle]

11 hours ago, sjoens said:

I lost a lot of audio clips on a damaged HDD that the recovery service was unable to recover. They are good at what they do but there's no guarantee with data recovery.

If you have this done I would keep the recovery HDD as a backup and upgrade the main drive to Solid State. Like John said, it has no moving parts to damage itself with.

Even good HDDs and floppy disks can fail over time just from age.

I'm planning to upgrade my projects drive, as well as my operating system drive, to solid state drives. I'm even planning to upgrade the tower. Would this be a good tower for the components I have in my current configuration? Here are some pictures of my current tower in attachments. Compare this to the tower I want to have. Meshify C — Fractal Design (fractal-design.com)

[Annabelle]

11 hours ago, sjoens said:

I lost a lot of audio clips on a damaged HDD that the recovery service was unable to recover. They are good at what they do but there's no guarantee with data recovery.

If you have this done I would keep the recovery HDD as a backup and upgrade the main drive to Solid State. Like John said, it has no moving parts to damage itself with.

Even good HDDs and floppy disks can fail over time just from age.

I wish I could post the other pictures. It seems crazy that 4.88 megabytes seems to be the limit for attachments.

[Annabelle]

1 hour ago, 57Gregy said:

So, I guess the answer is no? ?

I'm not about to give up so easily! I'm lookin' on the bright side and makin' sure I take this to a professional like Drivesavers, who has a 99% success rate. Pretty good if you ask me! I'd even pay $1,000,000,000,000,000 if I have to!