Reference Guide

919
File Recovery mode
Troubleshooting
You save a “recovery file” through SONAR's crash exception dialog. When a crash occurs in
SONAR you are presented with this dialog allowing you to attempt to save a recovery file. While this
works most of the time, occasionally SONAR may be in a compromised state due to memory
corruption. Under these circumstances, saving a file might cause a crash or the file might contain
invalid data.
In general, the best insurance against the data corruption scenarios above is to follow standard safe
computing practices to guard against data loss (keep regular backups, use autosave with
versioning, etc.). However, occasionally you may be faced with a situation where you do not have a
backup copy of a critical project that now fails to open.
SONAR's File Recovery Mode offers a means to help recover data from damaged project files.
To use File Recovery mode
Do one of the following:
• If you are opening a file from the Most Recently Used files list in the File menu, hold down the
SHIFT key while selecting file name.
• If you are opening the file from the Open dialog, select the file in the dialog and hold down the
SHIFT key while clicking the OK button.
What does File Recovery mode do?
File Recovery Mode applies the following behavior when opening a project file:
• Opens only the Track view, skipping all other opened views in the project including effects
windows, Console View etc.
• Prompts you if you want to open the plug-ins saved with your project. Each plug-in gets a prompt,
so you can open some and not open others.
• Ignores various strict error checks that would normally prevent a file from loading (only applies
when the original project fails to load normally).
• Detects corrupt data and skips over "chunks" that are found to be invalid. E.g., if a track/event is
detected to contain invalid data, SONAR will attempt to skip over that track/event and proceed to
load the next track/event (only applies when the original project fails to load normally).
In many cases, File Recovery Mode may be able to open damaged projects with minimal data loss.
However, the level of success depends on the nature and extent of the data corruption, so the
results are not predictable. As a result of this, after opening a damaged project in File Recovery
Mode, you must carefully observe whether your settings have been retained or if the project exhibits
Important: If you choose to not open a plug-in, that plug-in is stripped out of the project, so
resaving the file will cause a loss of any project specific settings for that plug-in.