Media files deleted after 2017.1 upgrade

Report · Apr 21, 2017

This may be a coincidence, but it's a mighty big one at that. I upgraded this afternoon and opened my most recent project. I went through the new features and then looked into the Preferences to see if there was anything new. Arriving at the Media Cache tab I decided click on "clean unused" Media Cache Database. That's something I've done in previous versions. Then I closed the open project and opened another I had finished last week. Surprise, all media files were missing. I checked the original file's directory. All of the root and subfolders were intact. However, when I looked in the clip folder all of the .MXF files were gone, leaving just the .xmp and .XML. Every folder, in every project that was shot in AVCHD or XAVC (except for the one that was initially open) was missing the media files. Not only that, but I found FCP 7 Capture scratch folders emptied except for the autosave vault. There were other media files missing as well including mp4 exports, and some but not all .mov exports from every project. Also missing are from a foder are .img files containing DVD images. Unexplainably, some ProRes files recorded on Atomos were untouched, as well as other's that were transcodes from XAVC to ProRes.

I contacted Adobe Support via chat. The agent told me that it was not possible for the "clean unused" function to cause all the deletions. You can specify the media cache directory to be cleaned and in my case it was definitely not the root of the drive, nor any of the media folders. He said that nobody has reported this issue so far.

All of my media is on a two drive RAID and that was the only drive effected. The good news is that all of my media is backed up, sometimes twice for the most important clients. Of course restoring all that media will take hours. Before I do that I'm running a file restoration program (that also takes hours).

Finally, the "clean unused" command may have nothing to do with it, but the fact that no media was deleted from the open project is suspicious.

Report · May 20, 2017

Hi All,

As a loyal PrPro subscriber for several years now I am appalled at the way Adobe have handled this issue. Through no fault of my own I personally I lost around 2-3Tbs of data (some of which wasn't backed up) my bad! However on a 16tb Raid 5 I foolishly thought that I had at least one back up available therein.

This caused us a very embarrassing delay to our contractual screenings of our current docu film rough cut to the Australian broadcaster and funding organisation.

I think at the VERY LEAST Adobe should offer those affected by this a 6 month free subscription. That would certainly go some way to healing the very real anxiety caused by this drama, and it was a drama...!! not only the initial loss but the ensuing weeks of wondering what was going to happen next. Every time our editor started up the machine we were on tenderhooks wondering what might occur.

Take this on board Adobe and think seriously about it! We are certainly looking at other options after this horrible glitch.

Stephen Hopes

Report · May 27, 2017

In the same boat. I came here to update my previous post but I can't find that post. So I'll just post here.

Working on a major documentary...while editing, over 2.4tb of data went off line and was deleted.

I bought and used a recovery tool. $90. It seems to have found everything but the links/pathways were not saved. Making that recovery almost useless. This means I'm going back to a few month old-back up and will put in about 60hrs of unpaid work to get back to where I was. So call it over $2000 out of my pocket because of this issue that Adobe knew about and had time to warn us of.

And no. I did nothing wrong. I have been editing and teaching editing for over 2o years. I'm just appalled. Mark McMinn

Report · May 27, 2017

This is just really, really bad. I hope that Adobe's program managers, and legal team, along with their marketing people, get together and contact you all behind the scenes to "make right" this horrible situation. From everything I've read, it appears that the stress test team did not create a scenario that it probably should have found. It does not appear that the scenario that has been described in numerous posts here is outside the box of normal test scenarios. Having been in a major software developer situation, I can tell you that it appears to be a scenario that should have been tested. If I were managing this test team, I would assume they had missed a common scenario.

It would not cost much for Adobe to "make this right" for the limited set of users that have experienced this. To be clear, I am not one of them. Just do it, Adobe.

Report · May 26, 2017

I’m Patrick, the product manager for Premiere Pro CC and Adobe Media Encoder CC.

Regarding recent issues associated with our Media Cache management feature, I’d like to apologize on behalf of the entire Premiere Pro / AME team unreservedly for any inconvenience the we caused.

The new Media Cache feature was intended to remove unneeded system generated cache files, which was a long standing user request. During testing of this feature we didn't cover all scenarios and the various workflows where the cache is not in the default location, which caused media deletion in some cases. The update (Version 11.1.1 ) we have released on May 17th, 2017 fixes the problem.

During this situation we also discovered problems in our ability to rapidly communicate directly with our users. We’re working on finding ways to make these communications faster and more effective moving forward. We appreciate all the input you’ve provided on the process – please keep it coming.

We as a company feel that direct feedback is the most helpful and I’ve connected with many of you who have provided invaluable feedback . If I haven’t spoken to you yet and if you’re willing to share feedback, please send me a private message and I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.

We deeply care about your experience with our products, and we’ll do our best to make sure you’re not going to experience critical issues like this.

Report · May 26, 2017

Calling the loss of an entire multi-terabyte volume, essentially years worth of my media team's output (acquired footage, audio, edited video, animation, Premiere and AE projects, scripts, Illustrator and Photoshop artwork, etc, etc), an "inconvenience" is quite the understatement. We're lucky that we had an online backup from which we were able to restore almost all of our work, and that it didn't take longer than 4 days to fully restore. We've reorganized and changed our workflow and archive schemes as a result of this, but it's baffling that something this catastrophic could originate from a media production tool, and that modern operating systems even allow for that level of file privilege with absolutely no user prompting.

Report · May 26, 2017

As a fellow user, I SO understand your situation. At least, for me, the presence on these open forums of the new PrPro Project Manager and several of the development team recently is a good change. Just didn't happen before.

Neil

Report · Sep 25, 2017

Oh my god. It is September 25th. I am reading tonight about a bug that Adobe knew about in May. If I had known about this anytime within the last 90 days, it would have saved me a lot of panic and lost time. I too have had all the media in multiple folders wiped. Photos and video. I almost randomly stumbled on this thread while looking for all my backups and stitching 4 years of projects back together. Some of it will be difficult or impossible to find again. Communications? I did not get the memo. I am absolutely, totally gobsmacked. This is stunning, and there must be more people out there like me who don't jump on every software update, who don't have 11.1.2, and don't know about this. Communications is not working.

Report · Oct 24, 2017

This happened to us once back in April. And now its happened twice in 24 hours. At random, it deletes almost entire drives. It happened to me twice. Deleted about 75%. But here heres the weird thing it keeps the folder structure so you don't even realize anything is wrong. How often do you actually check an old project, and old keep sake file? Weeks go by unnoticed. Our solution is to have plenty of complete back ups and have a separate super fast drive only for media cache and video previews. For us,since we work with RED Raw and Pro Res video previews are key to our workflow.

Report · Oct 25, 2017

PLEASE file a bug report on this!

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Those go in a tabulated form to all administrative/managerial types.

For now, I would suggest if possible ... for the Preferences/Media Cache" tab ...

Do NOT have "Delete cache files automatically" checked
Do NOT have "save cfa and pek media cache files next to original when possible" checked
DO check "Do not delete cache files automatically"

And if possible, have your cache files at least in a separate folder-tree from the root of a drive, if not on a separate drive.

Neil

Report · Oct 25, 2017

Hi Kyle,

You MUST upgrade to 2017.2 immediately! Stop using 2017.1!!

This issue has been fixed a while back.

It was an issue that was recognized too late, but it has been corrected.

Also, in case you didn't hear, 2018 has just been released.

I would recommend to update to 2017.2 and remove 2017.1. When you're ready and your projects are completed, install 2018.

When installing 2018, in the Advanced Options you can check "Keep Previous Version". 2017.2 and 2018 will run fine on the same machine. When you install 2018, your Prefs will migrate over from 2017.2.

But get 2017.2 installed asap!

Good Luck,

Bob K.

Report · Oct 25, 2017

On June 13th, Patrick Palmer, Product Manger for Premiere posted this:

Quick update: 11.1.2 went out this morning. Here's the blog post listing all the improvements and fixes that went into this release:

Premiere Pro 11.1.2 available today – critical update, highly recommended | Creative Cloud blog by A...

Report · Mar 30, 2018

In Sept of 2016 I subscribed to Adobe CC to edit a major documentary project. That next spring an Adobe update wiped my project drive. (as reported to this thread) I had a back up but still lost XX hours of work (my cost $4K). We were committed to a large film festival that week and we had to show an old back up version. That was a big professional hit for me. Adobe managers in Germany (Patrick J Palmer) and on the west coast (Laura Argilla) called me to say how sorry they were. I soon found they had given me free access to the CC suite. I finished my Documentary editing in the Fall of 2017 and kept access to the CC suite.

Around January Adobe said I needed to re-up my (now free) subscription. This turned out to be a new separate subscription. After a long time on chat with Adobe I got them to cancel both subscriptions and to refund me the two months billed to me. This is only mentioned because it shows customer service is still lacking.

My main reason for posting is I would like to communicate with Patrick or Laura again. They said I should contact them when the documentary is done but my email link is not working now. Thanks, Mark

Report · Jun 12, 2017

Hello everyone,

We wanted to update you on the current status of the Media Cache workflow.

We have an update to Premiere Pro CC 2017.1 (11.1.x) in the pipeline that will be released very shortly. It will include additional measures to safeguard the Media Cache workflow beyond what’s already released with 11.1.1. It’s an update highly recommended by the Premiere Pro team.

The most important change is that only media cache files of a known file type (such as *.pek, *.ims and *.cfa) will be deleted according to the cache management preference. The folders they are in will remain on the system. Additionally, the Media Cache management will be off by default – a lot of users have requested to switch to an opt-in model, and that’s what it’s going to be moving forward.

This next update will also include a number of performance improvements and bug fixes in other areas, and it will include support for the 10 bit formats of the Panasonic GH-5.

Stay tuned for more info which we’ll post to the blog:

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/tag/adobe-premiere-pro-cc/?segment=dva

Report · Jun 13, 2017

Quick update: 11.1.2 went out this morning. Here's the blog post listing all the improvements and fixes that went into this release:

Premiere Pro 11.1.2 available today – ciritical update, highly recommended | Creative Cloud blog by ...

Report · Jun 14, 2017

Hello Mr. Palmer,

I wanted to personally thank you and your team for not only taking care of this very serious matter by supplying the .1 update, but to take it much further with the .2 update is amazing. I also want to thank you for making yourself accessible to us all and for being what appears to be the "point person" to go to with our issues and feelings. I realize you are not here to be Tech Support, but it gives me great pleasure to know that you are here to not only answer for what happened, but to stay on top of the situation by seeing to a fix and to keep us informed about it. It makes my connection with Adobe more personal rather than feeling like a number in a phone cue.

I applaud you and your team and am looking forward to putting this behind us and getting back to enjoying your amazing software.

Sincerely,

Rob Keuler

Report · Jun 14, 2017

Patrick Palmer wrote,

"While 11.1.1 restricted cache management preference to be applied to files within the Media Cache folder structure"

This is not true.

Our drive on which the Media Cache folder resided was wiped clean of many files older than 90 days, regardless of what directory they resided in.

We lost over 4 TB of data. Files that were nested in directories where directory was not deleted but files were. The level of CYA and denial is amazing.

Our media cache was on root level of drive, we had no files within cache other than files that Adobe Premiere created there. The Premiere update went on a seek and destroy mission on entire drive, wiping files but leaving directories intact, so it wasn't noticeable until days later when we need to find some older files to update an older project for a client, OMG all files are missing, where did they go? Chcek the time stamp of when directories with missing files was last modified... time is matching exactly to when Adobe CC performed Premiere update. Adobe needs to be truthful about this.

Watts Communications, Editing Team

Wauwatosa, WI

Report · Jun 14, 2017

Sadly, this was my experience as well. All of my cache folders were on the root directory of my Drobo. When I went searching for some older files last week, I discovered folder upon folder that had been emptied. I couldn't understand what had happened at first. It was only a Google search that led me here, otherwise I'd still be scratching (pulling my hair out) my head.

Are your Premiere project files also gone? Mine are. There is no record on many projects that I ever did anything with them.

I'm running an undelete program hoping to recover the files, but as I understand it the file names will be altered during the recovery process, and therefore the structure of the project will be completely, and irrevocably broken.

I do think there is more here than Adobe is admitting to, but I'm thankful that they are at least speaking about this.

Report · Jun 14, 2017

We would like to correct our above post as Patrick's written qoute from blog clearly says, "While 11.1.1 restricted cache management preference to be applied to files within the Media Cache folder structure" that was the version which corrected the original updates deletion problem. \

So Patrick's quote is correct about 11.1.1, it was the original update version that went on a seek and destroy mission of our hard drive.

Sorry for confusion on quote.

Watts Communications, Edit Team

Wauwatosa, WI

Report · Jun 15, 2017

Hi team at Watts,

I guess this comes down to "too many numbers in one announcement" - I guess I could have included some more history and add the original 11.1 behaviour instead of just describing what's changed with the updates. Sorry for causing confusion.

A quick word on your original post: I completely understand your anger and your frustration. This should not have happened in the first place. And as Tara mentioned in her post a day ago, communications around the issue once it became known were far from ideal.

However, our intentions and our priorities are always about serving you the best we possibly can (true for me, the Premiere Pro team, and I can confidently speak on behalf of the company, too). I'm neither instructed to misguide you or hide something, and it would be my last day at Adobe if someone told me to.

Having this said: happy to get on the phone with you and discuss the problems you're still facing in more detail. Just send me a private message and let me know what's the best way for reaching out.

Sincerely,

Patrick

Report · Jun 15, 2017

Patrick,

Thank you for following up on this, it is appreciated. We will be in touch shortly via private message.

Watts Communications, Edit Team

Wauwatosa, WI

Report · Jun 14, 2017

Some thoughts on this incident - I really empathize with those who've lost data. I lost over 500GB of data, but fortunately had multiple backups and was able to restore them. For a few weeks I thought it was a System Mechanic defrag on my PC's data drive that had caused the data loss, until I found this thread. Despite multiple attempts to get support from System Mechanic, they have never made any effort to respond, however as soon as Adobe was aware of the problem they did everything they could to reach out to people here, and to contact all customers through email. 11.1.0 was the version with the deletion problem, 11.1.1 fixed that problem, and 11.1.2 has multiple fixes and enhancements. They have also put in a lot of effort to improve their notification process, and I would suspect there are changes in testing being implemented too.

I've never trusted a mirroring backup system, and manually backup everything using WinMerge. I compare what's on my master to what's on my backup, and if something is on the backup but not the master, I check to see if I really deleted it from the master, or if it indicates a data loss that needs to be restored from the backup. It's more trouble than just letting everything backup automatically, but in a situation like this it can make all the difference. I realize that won't bring back your data, but it might prevent a future data loss.

Report · Jun 28, 2017

Add another one to the list... my deletions happened at 2pm on May 17th...

In another thread, Adobe said they were "Sorry for this issue..."

Sorry for this issue??? SORRY FOR THIS ISSUE!?!??!!?!?! EVERY SINGLE FILE IN EVERY SINGLE MEDIA DIRECTORY ON THE DRIVE I SHARED WITH THE CACHE FOLDER IS GONE. MY VACATION PHOTOS? GONE. MY CAMERA BACKUPS? GONE. MY ENTIRE iTUNES LIBRARY???? GONE.

Oh, but this is the winner... My DROPBOX FOLDER was in the same location... Guess what happened??? ALL GONE!!!! Folders there, files GONE. Oh, and thanks to Dropbox's syncing, all the files on DROPBOX WERE DELETED TOO!!!!!!!!

I do NOT accept your apology.

Extremely unhappy, utterly freaked out, and just completely crushed.

12 hours after I posted this - I've spent over $200 on recovery software (EaseUS and Stellar Phoenix) and have recovered about 1/3 of my assets. Dropbox was able to restore the files on May 18th, but I thought it was a DropBox issue at the time... so I didn't check other directories. The restore of my DropBox surely added to the corruption of the other deleted files... so frustrated. If I'd caught it right away, I might have been able to save... but essentially, 2/3 of everything on that drive, older than 90 days from May 10th, or so is gone.

Yeah yeah... backups... but this is not right.

Report · Jun 28, 2017

Have you contacted Kevin Monahan, Product Support Manager for PrPro? If not, please do so ... and I'll "ping" him here.

Kevin-Monahan

Neil

Report · Jun 28, 2017

I've just messaged Kevin. Thanks for the heads up.

Report · Jun 28, 2017

Sigh.. what's the point? I've now spent $230 on restore and (attempted and failed) file repair software. What is Adobe going to do for me? There's nothing to restore... I've been running restore attempts, and I'm seeing that files have been written over by newer files - they are just gone. My wife is heartbroken. I'm devastated. My trust of Adobe and Premiere and my computer in general is dashed. It's as if our house was broken into and the drive was stolen...

$230 on restore and repair software... for nothing.