Garageband erased all aiff files of recordings made!!!

Question

Hi there,
I spent a few hours on garageband simply recording some audio over the internal mic. Some of it I recorded normally, some in loop mode. Then I edited it, cut out what I didn't want and also deleted whole tracks with some audio on it. After all the editing I had around 6 tracks with mainly short audio loops in it (made from these recordings earlier on).
I then saved the project. Then quit. Then put my computer to sleep.
3 minutes later I woke it up again, opened the same file in Garageband I'd previously been working on. Then all I got were error messages telling me one after the other, that all the aiff-files from the various recordings could not be found. I tried the "search" button, but that never found anything.
I opened the file and all my loops were there in form, but the audio was not there, i.e. couldn't play any of it.
I opened the package contents of the GB file and the media folder was empty. The file's size is 1.1MB.
This seems to be a huge bug. This has never happened to me before. It was the first time using Garageband on Snow Leopard. And possibly the first time using Garageband 09 at all (I've used older versions frequently).
Has noone else had this happen? It makes me nervous ****. I'd have to save, quit and reopen all the time to make sure the audio data is still there.
Looking forward to your comments.
JAD

Answer 1

Hey there Alphaspin,
Sorry to hear you had the same thing happen to you.
BUT AT THE SAME TIME I'm very happy to see someone confirm my problem. It's a first step on the way to freeing that poor little bug from GB, I'm assuming. (you hear that, Apple? Don't be too vicious with the poor thing. It's not its fault!)
As a note to various people above who were hypothesizing my failure to save the file properly.
I understand your scepticism, but think about this. If I hadn't saved the file properly (before quitting - as I remember well - or during the quitting process), why would all the loops still be shown in my tracks in the Garageband file? I don't see how that could possibly happen if the file wasn't in some way "saved".
What I see in the file I referenced in my first post, is everything exactly in the state I left it when I quit it, except for all the loops not playing because GB can't find the original aiff files in it's project file any more (because they've apparently been deleted during the quitting process).
Anyhow, I hope more people will find this post and confirm our experiences. Probably they won't find it before the ** hits the fan, unfortunately. It's all a learning experience as always. Just in this case backing up doesn't help diddly-squat. You can seemingly save it to as many HDs as you wish - if GB deletes the aiff files in the project, they're lost in multiple places at once
morale of the story: I will not use GB until I see this addressed and fixed and I can test it with some post-modern classical junk music. (because I don't feel like going back to leopard - which might fix the problem for the moment).