Audio missing from replacing project file

Hello!

 

This is my first time posting here so my apologies if my etiquette is off. I’m pretty uneducated when it comes to forums in general.

 

So here’s the problem I have:

 

I was mixing a song a few days ago and I saved the project file as “willow”. Today I started a new project for the same song, having forgotten I already had a project file. When I went to save it I got a prompt something along the lines of “willow” already exists. Would you like to replace it?”. I figured I’m pretty low on storage on my mac and would save a step in deleting the other file by just replacing it, so I saved it. When I went to reopen the project file, I was prompted that an audio file was missing. I tried locating on all volumes, searching manually, spotlight searching, and searching in “all my files” in finder, all to no avail. Now the file is showing up in the project as a blank audio file. Also, I was mixing with stems my friend sent me and weirdly the only audio file that’s missing is the one I recorded.

 

I know replacing the file was a dumb impulse move in retrospect, but if there’s no way for me to recover this file and I have to spend more time re-amping a guitar track and getting the mic perfectly in place, that’s a bandaid I wanna rip off right now lol. Otherwise any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks and I hope everyone’s staying safe,

Aidan

Looked in the trash bin for audio files? Restore from a backup? Time machine?

Thanks for responding! As unluck would have it, I emptied my trash bin just before I replaced the file. Pretty sure there were only files from takes I deleted there though. I tried restoring to a back up and had the same problem. I don’t use time machine currently

Once you overwrite a project file, all references to previous files are wiped. I don't think there's anything you can do.

And if you save as Packages, that will erase everything that was in it.

This is one of the most annoying things I’ve encountered in my short time as a producer. I’m missing an audio file from one of my favorite creations and it pisses me off. It literally just disappeared off my Mac. God knows why, but from now on I’m saving a copy of all audio files in my projects on an external drive.