Media files deleted after 2017.1 upgrade

[leebergtally]

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. 

[leebergtally]

Thanks.  I'll give that a try.  BTW, that the same folder path I've used for the past several versions and this is the first time files have gone missing.

[TallTaleChicago]

This sounds a lot like the issue I have been trying to figure out. I have been working for 2 years on a major feature documentary. We had 14.5TB of footage with no issues. Last week I added 400GB of new footage the way I always do (copy media from external hard drive to the 24TB Promise Pegasus RAID. After the transfer was complete, I opened up the premiere project and 8,162 files were missing. I went looking for them to reconnect (maybe they were accidentally moved somehow???). 10 TB of data was missing. And it was very randomly selected. And it most definitely was not all over 90 days old, but the more I read of this thread the more it sounds like the automatic cache clearing happened to me. What I can't understand for the life of me is...

1. Why did actual media get deleted in addition to cache files?

2. Why was it so randomized?

3. Where did it go? Why didn't it go into a trash bin or some other retrievable area first?

4. Why was I not notified by the system that this was occuring or about to occur?

5. How does 10 terabytes of data disappear instantly? It should have taken hours to move or delete this information, right?

i have backups of the media, but not some of the documents. This is a MAJOR issue for the workflow of this film, and I am now concerned it will happen again to this project or others. I'm pissed off that this glitch has occurred. I called adobe and they refused to accept the possibility that Premiere caused the purge. The company that makes the RAID has no idea how it could have occurred, and Apple is obviously no help.

[justiny72990083]

This happened to me, and for the life of me couldn't figure out what happened.

3TB of actual media... vanished instantly. Has anyone been able to recover this or is it truly gone?

[holacachetecomoestastu]

I used a demo/free trial from Data Rescue 4 and detail-scanned my hard drive. It took a while but It was able to find a bunch of the files. I hope that helps.

[dyingbirdproductions]

Happened to me twice on 2 seperate drives. In both cases, I was able to recover everything. The recovery software treated the files like they were deleted. As long as nothing new is written to the drive, deleted files should be completely recoverable.

I was lucky in that I was able to catch it. I fear for larger post houses who might write to the drive before realizing what happened. Those people are surely screwed.

[flyingleatherneck]

Totally the same problem here. Absolutely outrageous and a disgrace on the behalf of Adobe. Only saving grace is I have backed everything up multiple times but it has relentlessly ERASED CAMERA ORIGINAL. Unbelievable.

Disgrace is too light a word.

[flyingleatherneck]

... by the way, Adobe should be sued for this.

Any lawyer wants to start a class action, I am IN.

[flyingleatherneck]

- and finally, the level of this is STAGGERING. That a software program could go into a folder structure that I created, a sub folder structure within that which I created as well and DELETE ALL ORIGINAL FOOTAGE (but keep all the folders, now empty) defies belief.

The program I worked on shot all around the country over 18 months and 25 different episodes. Post Production has been going on for 6 months.

Adobe creates a software program that seeks and destroys all the camera original (and sound original ). Terabytes and terabytes and terabytes of precious footage it randomly decides to ERASE.

Beyond belief.

[patrickml]

I am also in for lawsuit.  I lost over 7TB.  Lost a major project that I did not have a chance to back up.  Customer service didn't care. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Contact the PrPro support directly ... I received emails from both Adobe Editing Manager (and now PrPro head, replacing Al Mooney in April or so) Patrick Palmer and also one from the business support or something offices wanting to know of any damage I may have received and offering to assist.

Digital Video Apps (DVA) Product Support manager Kevin-Monahan​ or his helpers RameezKhan​ or kulpreet singh​ can direct you to such support.

Neil

[patrickml]

Thanks Neil,

I did contact support and they were unconcerned or even tried to be helpful.  Here are a sample from the chat.  I will try reaching out to the people you listed instead and maybe I will have better results.  It was shameful how they just tried to blow me off. 

R: It has been fixed fixed with the latest update

Patrick Lewtschanyn: well thats great, but what about the irreplaceable media I lost?

R: I am really sorry that there is nothing we can do or we can recover anything

[R Neil Haugen]

"Chat" isn't even in the same area of the company. And besides that, if you didn't know to ask for the "Video Que" ... and who does without being told about it? ... you get a generalist and they often have little personal knowledge of the video apps let alone any awareness of special issues. So yea, there ... I wouldn't expect much.

Contact the above linked people ... you should get better service.

Neil

[patrickml]

Yes Neil.  You are absolutely correct.  Kevin introduced me already to the right people so I am getting much better and more expected service.  Thanks for your suggestion!

Cheers,

Patrick

[R Neil Haugen]

Glad you're getting assistance.

Neil

[TallTaleChicago]

By the way, this is Adobe's response....

Avoid potential deletion of media files in Premiere Pro CC 2017 (11.1)

[KeulerB]

It happened to me this past Saturday morning. I had heard of the file deletion issue from the Tech Support people at my job, went home to check on my files and every jpeg, mov, Raw and PSD file on my media drive was gone. The folders were preserved, everything inside wiped! I do have a backup, but it will still take quite a while to restore about 2TB of media.

All I have is a C drive and a 2TB media drive in my PC running Windows 7 Pro. I always kept the Media Cache on the media drive in Media Cache folders. I would select the root and Premiere would create the folders. Apparently, not this version. I double checked the location settings and it showed a path to the root of the media drive. I tried to move it back to the System drive and I would get a pop up message stating that I did not have permission to use the C drive when I'm the Admin. Strange. I tried deleting the prefs, but I guess since I also have 2015.2 installed, they wouldn't completely reset.

Next, I set up an external hard drive via USB 3. I was able to move the Media Cache there. Then I set the prefs to "do not automatically delete." Then, I inadvertently killed the power to my external drive when I launched Premiere. It then notified me that the Media Cache folder could not be found and that it would be placed in the "default" location. I let it do it and double checked the directory. The proper folders were created on my C drive.

So, I'm still in the process of restoring my files and have automatic delete turned off. What media has been restored has not been deleted.

Looking forward to that fix as I also suggested to my employer to upgrade. I'll let you know if I still have a job when I get in...

Rob K.

[leebergtally]

While this situation is awful and I believe, zero fault of any of the users in this thread, please follow the instructions in this link from Adobe Avoid potential deletion of media files in Premiere Pro CC 2017 (11.1)   Sooner than later, I hope Adobe will be accountable for this awful programming blunder.

[Patrick Faith]

How Adobe presented this is totally not acceptable, it was nay impossible to find this thread.  Also even the 11.1.1 patch notes do not even mention this problem.  There needs to be a sticky & email to all accounts with a recommendation for all 11.1 users to perform the recent patch or entire disk array directories could be deleted.

[KeulerB]

Thank you Patrick for the notification of the update. I booted my PC and wanted to see if the Cloud app would notify me of the update. After 15 minutes, it did not. I opened the app and there it was: Premiere 11.1.1 and Audition 10.1.1.

For Premiere the addition of the Essential Graphics panel "and more" is mentioned. I would love for someone to confirm that this disaster is indeed fixed. I'm concerned that we may not because that would imply a mistake on Adobe's part. How crazy is this?

Good luck all...

BK

Mod note: Edited for content. Please do not mention legal issues on Adobe forums. It is against our community guidelines.

[sebrame]

Never lose site of the fact that Abobe, and all companies, have a hierarchy of allegiance.

1 - Their shareholders

2 - Their customers

[KeulerB]

In this case I think they might have "some splainin' to do" to the shareholders and especially the customers.

I'm still recovering my media and am seriously considering requesting a credit on my subscription.

I've never been a fan of the subscription model. This just gives me more ammo.

<sigh>

[KeulerB]

Understood...

[Tara T]

This is one of the reasons I don't use a mirroring backup process.  I use WinMerge to manually check for differences between my source and backup files, and just discovered other missing files from the same drive. 

Adobe, how about emailing all of your licensed PP customers so they have a better chance of recovering or preventing the problem?

[Reg Santo Tomas]

The latest update (11.1.1) has changed the behavior of the media cache preferences. Instead of deleting files in the selected media cache folder based on the cache management policy preference, only files located in application created in sub directories will be subject for deletion.

[KeulerB]

I'm sorry, two things:

1. Is there some sort of documentation that backs this up?

2. I ask because I am having a difficult time understanding the writing of your post.

"only files located in application created in sub directories will be subject for deletion."

Thanks.