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Topic: Foobar deleted my music (Read 3215 times) previous topic - next topic
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Foobar deleted my music

Hi!
I am new to Foobar.  Earlier, I used MediaMonkey and MusicBee.
I installed Foobar 2000 to play my .wav, .flac files of high quality (16 bit; 24/96; 24/192) after reading rave reviews about it. Once installed, I added files from the connected external hard disk containing over one terrabyte of audio collection, It populated and the entire collection showed up in the library (but just the songs with details of artist, bitrate, file size etc. (the ones I wanted) were visible, without the folders, or at least, I did not see any folders or Library tree as shown in MediaMonkey or MusicBee or others.  I wanted to arrange them by folders so that I can choose to play them accordingly, so, I cleared the files in the library.

And Alas! All my files got deleted from the source as well (from my external hard drive).
My external hard disk has now only the folders but no songs in them.  WHY..?????????????
Can I retrieve them back..??   HELP PLEASE..

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #1 –
So when you get a confirmation dialogue about deleting files, you just pressed "Yes"?

foobar2000 did delete your files, but it did it when you specifically asked it to do it, so nope, unfortunately there is no way to get your files back if they are not in your recycle bin. There are some programs that can retrieve deleted files, but how reliable they are, I have no idea.

Maybe this article gives some help to you: https://www.howtogeek.com/169344/how-to-recover-a-deleted-file-the-ultimate-guide/
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #2 –
"I cleared the files in the library. "

Did you do this with right-click > File Operations > Delete Files?
Because yeah, that actually deletes files. You can't delete items in the libary database, except by removing the folders from monitoring.

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #3 –
Thank you DotNoir and Dhromed for your prompt responses.

No, there was no pop-up dialog box for confirmation of delete. When I cleared the library (thinking I will re-select/import the requisite files by folder) that's when it happened. Neither, it notified me that the source file will be deleted nor, it sought a confirmation. 
Note: These folder and files were in the external hard disc which was hooked to the laptop. After Foobar deleted them, the external hard disk has all the folders (Artists and Albums) but the songs inside these folders are missing.
We looked into the recycle bin of the laptop which was populating files then. After a wait, we found some 2000-3000 files. Tried restoring them all, it processed for a while but nothing came back in the respective folders.

Also, I don't recollect if I had used the Right click option (as Dhromed mentioned) but I'm certain that Foobar did not ask for any confirmation or give any warning before deleting my files from their original source (external hard disk).

Today, we have used a recovery software Recuva - paid version (publisher is Piriform, makers of CC Cleaner). Recuva recovered from the recycle bin many files that we kept in a separate external disk, as instructed) but none of them play - these files are uniformly of 544kb. Strange.. :(

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #4 –
The File Operations delete function will always ask before deleting and afaik there is no way to turn it off (precisely for this kind of situation), so I'm 90% certain you must have done something else.

Have you rebound any keys? Installed custom components?

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #5 –
No dhromed, I didn't do anything other than that. Since, it wasn't the familiar interface I did not custom install anything either. Couple of things I did were checking on gain settings, equalizer settings to know whether it is functional, and that's it.

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #7 –
How exactly did you clear the files from foobar2000?

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #8 –
Yes, Foobar 1.4 is deleting files from external drive. Please resolve the problem :(

- I was trying to properly tag an album selected in "facets" component
- Double click in metadata window with two discs from the same album selected
- For some reason taggin fails
- Foobar asked me to save the metadata after this step, then I press "NO" button and...
- All contents in the folder dissapeared track by track in front of my eyes from facets library. Music files, cues, .jpgs, .pdf... ANYTHING :( BUT DE FOLDER STRUCTURE REMAINS in my drive... this sucks :(
- And no files in my recicle bin :( :( :(

This is a very important error I hope you resolve. Thanks in advance!

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #9 –
Unfortunately the topic starter never explained what he did. Hopefully we'll have better luck with you.

When you say "metadata window" do you mean properties dialog (right click tracks -> Properties)? If not what method did you use to try to edit the tags?

Do you remember what file format it was you tagged?

What kind of external drive is this? USB or network connected? What is the full path of the now empty folder?

Can you open Preferences -> Components and hit "Copy report" button and paste the copied report in a reply here?

Can you put similar test files back to the now-empty folder and try to perform the actions you performed earlier, this time with Process Monitor running? If any files get removed please share the Process Monitor's log.

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #10 –
Yes, it is the "Properties" floating window, but accesing right from the "selection properties" UI element, double clicking in a text line on it with BOTH (CD1 & CD2) selected in Facets

APE or Flac but... maybe was the CUE file... ¿? I'm not sure

USB drive, "E:\Mi Musica\Flac\<artist>\<album>\CD1" and same for CD2 (using Macdrive 8 with no problems until now) empty CD1 & CD2 folders inside the <album> one,  still there...

REPORT:
---------------------------------------------------------
Core (2018-07-24 10:54:48 UTC)
    foobar2000 core 1.4
foo_albumlist.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:02 UTC)
    Album List 4.6
foo_cdda.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:04 UTC)
    CD Audio Decoder 3.0
foo_converter.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:04 UTC)
    Converter 1.5.3
foo_dsp_eq.dll (2018-07-24 10:53:56 UTC)
    Equalizer 1.2.1
foo_dsp_std.dll (2018-07-24 10:53:58 UTC)
    Standard DSP Array 1.3.1
foo_facets.dll (2018-09-01 05:04:44 UTC)
    Facets 1.0
foo_fileops.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:00 UTC)
    File Operations 2.3
foo_freedb2.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:14 UTC)
    Online Tagger 0.7
foo_input_std.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:34 UTC)
    FFmpeg Decoders 3.2.4
    Standard Input Array 1.0
foo_out_asio.dll (2018-09-01 05:03:42 UTC)
    ASIO support 2.1.2
foo_out_wasapi.dll (2018-09-01 05:04:08 UTC)
    WASAPI output support 3.3
foo_rgscan.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:10 UTC)
    ReplayGain Scanner 2.3
foo_textdisplay.dll (2018-09-01 05:04:50 UTC)
    Text Display UI Element 1.1 beta 1
foo_ui_std.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:14 UTC)
    Default User Interface 0.9.5
foo_uie_lyrics3.dll (2018-09-01 05:03:55 UTC)
    Lyric Show Panel 3 0.5
foo_unpack.dll (2018-07-24 10:54:08 UTC)
    ZIP/GZIP/RAR Reader 1.8
foo_wave_seekbar.dll (2018-09-01 05:04:02 UTC)
    Waveform seekbar 0.2.45
---------------------------------------------------------

To perform the error again, I need a file that fails at the moment of tagging. Unfortunely I dont know why some files (a few) sometimes do... Please sorry about my english XD

Thank you for your response and help Case!

 

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #11 –
I'm pretty certain the problem is not with foobar2000 but with the drive.

You don't have any components that would do anything weird to your files, and foobar2000 performing tagging would not touch anything but the audio files. And if it gave an error message it heavily suggests that it failed to even touch the files.

I read through the changelogs for MacDrive 9 and MacDrive 10 and there seems to have been a lot of fixing going on since version 8 of their software. Bug in the driver or some temporary power interruption with the drive could have corrupted the file system hiding the files. I'd recommend running a filesystem check on the drive. I fear you can't use Windows' chkdsk and instead have to use native tools on macOS / OS X.

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #12 –
I think your right. It have no sense. Thank you for your help Case.

Running Foobar for years without any problem as my only audio player. I think this piece of software is amazing and I suspect macdrive is causing a few blue screens in my machine recently... buggy MF...

I'm in the titanic effort of move my 1TB music library and formatting the drive to exFAT file system to say macdrive goodbye right now.

 8)  8)  8)  Apologise Foobar team!
 

Re: Foobar deleted my music

Reply #13 –
Quote from: Gopal on
(...), I did not see any folders or Library tree as shown in MediaMonkey or MusicBee or others.  I wanted to arrange them by folders so that I can choose to play them accordingly, so, I cleared the files in the library. (...)
I wonder: Why didn't you try the View "by folder structure" (built-in)? Unless your files are untagged, there are much better ways to select your music than by folder structure. (For example you could use this library view for chronological browsing (proper tags assumed): "$if($put(YEAR,$year(%date%)),$mul($div($get(YEAR),10),10),'<unknown>')|$if($strcmp($get(YEAR),'<unknown>'),'<unknown>',$mod($get(YEAR),10))|[%artist% - ][%album%]|[[%discnumber%.][%tracknumber% ]][%title%]")