I can’t open my project / File Recovery mode

SONAR 5 introduced a special diagnostic mode called Safe Mode to fix problems with project files that would not open. Safe mode is activated when you open a file while the SHIFT key is pressed.

In certain rare circumstances, on attempting to open a project file you may see the following error message:

“This file you are trying to open is not compatible with this version of SONAR”.

This message indicates that SONAR detected errors in the project file and was unable to open it. This normally indicates that your project file has data corruption.

Data corruption on a DAW can occur due to various reasons, a few of which include:

Your hard drive might suffer data loss.

Windows delayed writes might fail leading to data corruption.

Many hard disks have a “write through cache” buffer for efficiency. Occasionally this write through buffer might not get flushed due to a driver error or system crash. In such cases data might not be flushed to your hard driver causing corrupt files (SONAR requests Windows to flush this buffer after a file save operation).

A plug-in can corrupt SONAR's memory space causing invalid data to be written to disk when the project is saved.

During a file save the system can crash. In such situations, you will have a truncated file on disk.

You save a “recovery file” through SONAR's crash exception dialog box. When a crash occurs in SONAR, you are presented with this dialog box 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 box, select the file in the dialog box 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 to open the plug-ins saved with your project. Each plug-in gets a prompt, so you can open some and not open others.

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.

Ignores various strict error checks that would normally prevent a file from loading.

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.

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 other problems. If you notice problems you should copy and paste the critical data from the recovered file into a brand new empty project to start clean.

Important: Since File Recovery Mode ignores many critical error checks while loading a file, depending on the nature of the data corruption in the file, it is possible that opening a file with File Recovery Mode might cause SONAR to crash or become unresponsive. Please ensure that you save all your current work and close all open projects before attempting to open a file with File Recovery Mode.

After loading a file with File Recovery Mode, it is recommended that you resave the file—preferably with a new name—and then shut down and restart SONAR before proceeding.

 

More Frequently asked questions.