Recovered drive won't let me open project. "Unknown error occurred"

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
June 1, 2022
4 replies
2702 views

Hello,

Hoping someone can help me. The external hard drive I was using as my working drive failed about a week ago. (Actually, it still operated, just the main project folder stopped showing up). Thankfully, I was able to recover everything using Disk Drill recovery software. When it finished processing I saved it all to a new drive. And now I'm trying to re-create the Premiere Pro project I was working on. However, the project won't open. I've tried opening the main project as well as many of the auto-saved files, and I always get the same pop up message... "An unknown error occurred while opening the project." (I've attached a screen grab). Any help or ideas of how to fix this would be most appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

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Correct answer leicaguy

Good news (for me), in searching through the labyrinth of files recovered by Disk Drill (many of which were ghost files from previous uses of that drive), I stumbled upon another copy of the project files. But this time it opened! Woo Hoo! I'm going through and re-linking media and such but looks like my problem is solved. Thanks for all your help everyone! Really appreciate that this is a place I can come when things go wrong! Will be saving this project in other places as well going forward.

C

CroixSather

Participant

I had this problem."An unknown error occurred while opening the project." It wouldn't open when I started Premiere Pro. The solution I found was to open the project from FINDER or FILES. Or open Premiere Pro, escape out of the opening box when starting PP. Then go to Files > Open recent.

I first disconected my hard drives, restarted the computer, and then opening it directly from the file. Hours of work saved and yelling colorful words.

Here is a youtube video I found on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euR3PO_W7XM

Hope this helps.

leicaguyAuthorCorrect answer

Inspiring

Good news (for me), in searching through the labyrinth of files recovered by Disk Drill (many of which were ghost files from previous uses of that drive), I stumbled upon another copy of the project files. But this time it opened! Woo Hoo! I'm going through and re-linking media and such but looks like my problem is solved. Thanks for all your help everyone! Really appreciate that this is a place I can come when things go wrong! Will be saving this project in other places as well going forward.

Averdahl

Community Expert

...Thankfully, I was able to recover everything using Disk Drill recovery software.

By @leicaguy

Was the failing drive an SSD or HDD?

Recovering large media files successfully from an SSD is hard. The files can be recovered but they fail to open. I deleted a file by mistake from a SSD disk yesterday and while the latest version of Disk Drill did recover the file it was damaged and could not be opened in any app.

So, if you create a brand new project, can you import any media files from the recovered main project folder?

M

Michael Grenadier

Legend

I had a chip fail with the files corrupted and was able to use diskdrill to restore the files. However, the files would not open. I eventually found someone in Spain if I remember correctly who was able to successfully create a program to make the files usable... I think they were mxf format. If anyone needs some help with this, post back and I'll see if I can dig the info out from old emails... If I remember correctly I sent him a single file and for about $100 US, he sent me a program that got the files working again. worth every penny. This was a multicamera shoot and there was a canon camera that had two cf cards and was supposed to automatically transfer to the second card... Averdahl, if that file is important, let me know.