Beta testing and stolen tracks
Hi Friends,
While I’ve been helping with the v6 betas, my computer has been breached and a collection of drum tracks that I wrote are all gone. Along with patterns I made to make the songs easier to do.
I’m also missing all the tracks of a new song I’ve written and recorded titled “Synked” aka "FU"
I’m not so naive to think my stuff is so great that it’s worthy of stealing. But I’m sure it’s tasty ripe for any hateful hackers who like to give hard times to some. All I can say is; “it takes an arshole to be one”.
If any of you know who did this, I’ll give ya a very nice reward for coming forward.
The same thing happened while beta testing v5. But it was a song of sexy nature so I thought that was a goody goody type attack.
To the person who did this. Your a chicken/Sht and I’m looking forward to meeting you face to face.
You can reach me by email,
Levi
Serious? Why would someone do that? And How?
Are you sure you just didn’t misplace the folder/files on a hard disk somewhere? It seems to me it would take a hacker a crap load of work to get into your PC. Even if one did, it has to be a gazillion to one odds he/she were a musician looking for music data to steal from an amateur musician/recording nut. Personal info such as credit card numbers, SS number, shoe size etc would be a much more likely target.
I know I’ll probably get nuked for mentioning it, but it’s possible, probably un-likely, but possible that all the un-install, re-install, overwriting crap during the beta testing hosed some data folders or files. Did you have any wave and/or midi data in a folder nested under the FaSoft
-Track Studio folder? If you did, BREAK THAT HABIT NOW! Always, always, always put that data in another folder preferably on a separate hard drive.
There was a guy raising a HUGE ruckus over on the ‘R’ forums about losing his stuff. He had jumped to a Mac from PC and was keeping his files under the Reaper root folder. Well… the OSX file system WIPES a folder without prompting if you just drag and drop a new installer to update something. Bottom line, know your machine and how the file system works or you WILL lose stuff.
D#$N! Wrote another freakin’ book…
D - back into lurk mode…
Lossing a song is terrible.
That is an awful experience - I wish I could say I had never had it happen to me, but it sure has.
Now, I have an external hard drive on my USB port and the first thing I do is back up each session Before I work oon anything.
However,
I have done extensive testing with both beta 5 and beta 6, and I never lost a file because of N-track. In a way, I guess I was beta testing version 2,3,4 and Ntrack never lost a file - but I did cause some files to be lost.
I have lost files when I accidently used the Remove Track > Remove Track command.
That can be a danger for sure. Be Certain to use the “Only Remove From Song” or “Recycle Bin”
The “Delete from Disk” is perminate and dangerous - click that and it is Gone forever! It is not in the Recycle Bin either.
Ways to loss a file that is still there:
Useing the track renaming feature to change the name of a file on the hard drive (click hold on the tracks name tag - enter the new name in the box and accept it as the perminate/new name for the wav file).
This is a great feature - unless, you do not realize that you have now changed the name of the file on the hard drive and you go looking for it under the old name. So the file that was named My Best Song 1L.wav is now Guitar track.wav
Using File > Move/Rename you can move all the files to a new directory and append a new name (the name of the song file, that the title you have named the N-track work .sng file.
the default name is New Song - so, if you accidently tell the move to append the title on each wave file, you will create files that have names you didn’t intend.
Example:
The Title of your song is “My Best Ever!” and you have named the
wave files that.
You recorded with a stereo input onto two different tracks, so, you have two wav files - in windows the files are My Best Ever 1L.wav and My Best Ever 1R.wav.
YOu open Ntrack and do some mixing and editing - The default name for the Ntrack workspace is New Song. In Windows this file is New Song.sng
Now, you do a File > Move and you check the box Add song name to .wav file name.
The wav file is now named New Song My Best Ever 1L.wav and New Song My Best Ever 1R.wav
None of these thingss may have caused the lost files, but it might give you some ideas on what to look for.
Hope they turn up.
Bax
Nice little write-up Bax.
Again, it is unlikely that n-Track somehow “lost” the files but the user can inadvertently trash 'em if he/she is not careful. I have the DAW I’m working with store all files in the working directory specified during the “Save As…” operation. That is the FIRST thing I do. File > Save As… > “Geetar Wank Fest in Dm” under a folder of the same name. Then I go to work…
I’ve not lost anything since I started doing it that way. There was a spell in the early days of n’s “Freeze” function where somehow, it would lose track of the frozen files and I’d have to find them manually (or they were just GONE) or re-freeze 'em.
Dunno what’s up with Levi’s problem but I hope he figures it out. Frustration is a bad thing…
D
Quote: (Poppa Willis @ Sep. 17 2008, 11:04 PM)
And How?
My thoughts exactly.
For what it’s worth - I just had a bunch of Trojans
on my rig.
Picture here
BUMMER 7 o’ 11!! I have been UBER lucky. I’ve been online since 2400 bps modems were the shizzle and have never been hit…
It’s funny… when the 9600’s hit I thought “WOW… FREAKIN’ WOW!! It CAN’T get any better than THIS!!!” LOL…
D
Levi, tell us how this could have been done. I don’t know much about this sort of thing, but it seems so unlikely. You have enemies? Or might this be a case of premature adjudication?
Ooooh - I’ve waited so long to use that joke. Rumpole, if anyone cares. 
I’m confused here, how would that happen?
Hi guys thx for your concern.
I didn’t say or imply that nTrack was at fault. I simply ment while online and coming to this forum (during this time period) my drum tracks have been wiped out, from the drum program folder, separate and apart from nTrack.
The song that was lost (not misplaced nor accidentally deleted) was in an nTrack folder however I don’t believe it’s absence is related to nTrack at all.
Do I have enemies? Sure believe that I do, I’m old aren’t I? 
However I don’t feel that I’m anyones enemy.
How can it happen? I thought some of you higher intellectual types would have a field day with those possibilities. I’m wireless, have a broadband, there are remote desktop assistants (who knows what scripts have spawned from that), Trojans.
Anything else? Well many people in the co i work for know that I do music in my truck. Maybe one of them climbed in my truck during a truck service and wiped them out. Doubt it, don’t have enemies in the co. Me? I don’t delete things from that folder ever.
Believe me they are all gone. Frustrated? No, but I am disappointed. I’ve got to much goin on to be frustrated. But, I don’t feel much like joking around right now.
Levi
Sorry Levi - didn’t mean to joke around and make light of your missing files.
Quote: (bax3 @ Sep. 18 2008, 9:39 AM)
Lossing a song is terrible. That is an awful experience - I wish I could say I had never had it happen to me, but it sure has. Now, I have an external hard drive on my USB port and the first thing I do is back up each session Before I work oon anything.
However,
I have done extensive testing with both beta 5 and beta 6, and I never lost a file because of N-track. In a way, I guess I was beta testing version 2,3,4 and Ntrack never lost a file - but I did cause some files to be lost.
I have lost files when I accidently used the Remove Track > Remove Track command. That can be a danger for sure. Be Certain to use the "Only Remove From Song" or "Recycle Bin" The "Delete from Disk" is perminate and dangerous - click that and it is Gone forever! It is not in the Recycle Bin either.
Ways to loss a file that is still there:
Useing the track renaming feature to change the name of a file on the hard drive (click hold on the tracks name tag - enter the new name in the box and accept it as the perminate/new name for the wav file). This is a great feature - unless, you do not realize that you have now changed the name of the file on the hard drive and you go looking for it under the old name. So the file that was named My Best Song 1L.wav is now Guitar track.wav
Using File > Move/Rename you can move all the files to a new directory and append a new name (the name of the song file, that the title you have named the N-track work .sng file. the default name is New Song - so, if you accidently tell the move to append the title on each wave file, you will create files that have names you didn't intend.
Example:
The Title of your song is "My Best Ever!" and you have named the wave files that. You recorded with a stereo input onto two different tracks, so, you have two wav files - in windows the files are My Best Ever 1L.wav and My Best Ever 1R.wav.
YOu open Ntrack and do some mixing and editing - The default name for the Ntrack workspace is New Song. In Windows this file is New Song.sng
Now, you do a File > Move and you check the box Add song name to .wav file name.
The wav file is now named New Song My Best Ever 1L.wav and New Song My Best Ever 1R.wav
None of these thingss may have caused the lost files, but it might give you some ideas on what to look for.
Hope they turn up.
Bax
Thx Bax, much appreciated!
Hi guys thx for your concern.
I didn't say or imply that nTrack was at fault. I simply ment while online and coming to this forum (during this time period) my drum tracks have been wiped out, from the drum program folder, separate and apart from nTrack.
The song that was lost (not misplaced nor accidentally deleted) was in an nTrack folder however I don't believe it's absence is related to nTrack at all.
Do I have enemies? Sure believe that I do, I'm old aren't I?
However I don't feel that I'm anyones enemy.How can it happen? I thought some of you higher intellectual types would have a field day with those possibilities. I'm wireless, have a broadband, there are remote desktop assistants (who knows what scripts have spawned from that), Trojans.
Anything else? Well many people in the co i work for know that I do music in my truck. Maybe one of them climbed in my truck during a truck service and wiped them out. Doubt it, don't have enemies in the co. Me? I don't delete things from that folder ever.
Believe me they are all gone. Frustrated? No, but I am disappointed. I've got to much goin on to be frustrated. But, I don't feel much like joking around right now.
Levi
Boy…
That’s tough…
I’m over here struggling to keep an operating system up-and-running…
I’m writing this reply from the only setup I can get to the internet with/now…
It happens to be the '98SE operating system on the P-4 dual boot studio computer.
When I left for work this morning I set the Virus scan on the XP P-111 machine sometime around 5am my time only to return at noontime to find the scan was stalled and only on the “F” drive out of six local drives on that machine…
Normally, I only scan the Boot drives of these machines…
But with the start-up and shutdown issues I have on this machine I setup to scan
all the drives…
When I returned I found the F Drive full of Trojans and Malware…
That’s fine with me…
all the drives appeared clean now… However, I am unable to reach the XP Desk even in Safe mode, now…
I not sure what to believe…
but…
I think I’ve been breached three times sense late June…
AND…
Why has both AVG and Panda Antivirus 2008 missed all this stuff.
?
Sense I use two machines with as many as 14-16 local and removable hard drives … I have plenty of backup for any tracks and projects I work on…
I don’t know how-or-why this is happening to me…
I don’t move single files from one place to another…
It’s mostly folders with several-or-many files…
and only between drives with-in my two machines…
Who would be interested in the stuff I work on…
anyway.
? I only have a dial-up and modem to connect to the internet…
Yet…
I’m being hit…
BIG TIME…
I don’t think I’ve lost any files or folders…
but it’s a real bummer to have to start another XP Build on this P-111…
and…
to find that I am unable to reach the XP Desk on the Studio P-4 machine…
It looks like I’m gonna have to rebuild that boot drive…
I have a current AVG application on the '98SE desk…
that can only scan/see FAT-32 formatted drives…
Bill…
I finally set up a desktop computer that is not connected to the internet.
My problem now is that the programs that I use repair Window XP want to check the internet (System Machanic and Norton.)
I used Norton to block the other programs that want to “dial home” every time you open them, like Sound Forge and other Sony products to mention some of them. When Norton or System Machanic goes looking for the internet it puts a load on the computer. AT LEast, The is What I think is Happening.
I don’t think there is another alturnitive…
I believe yea gotta get connected to the internet with all the present-day software weather you like-it-or-not…
Microsoft in all it’s wisdom along with the other software developers requires/wants everyone connected to the internet anytime you fire up your setups…
AND…
there you are…
sitting there with all it’s vulnerabilities…
waiting for someone to peep in…
to see what you’re up-to…
Bill…
I see you here Ray…
You’re sounding better…
Good for you…
I had to return to this thread…
I discovered I am unable to shut down the only operating system I have that works now…
The report I make, is…
I have to be infected with some kind of Trojan, virus, malware, or
whatever…
So, by not able to power down I soft re-booted only to see when the Desk appeared a nag/popup screen appeared on the desk saying…
marco!.src
Access to the specified device path,or file is denied The popup screen points to the .ini folder…
What is this… ?
I have no idea how to fix this…
I think it’s just a matter of time and…
I’ll not be able to boot to this operating system…
This is devistating…
All-of-That…
for…
All-of-That…
I think by…
Not being able to Power-Down
causes Key Files to get corrupt,misplaced, or lost …
among other things…
Who Knows…
?
Bill…
p.s. I’m sorry to vent my frustrations here, on this thread…
Bill
See if this helps.
http://www.easydesksoftware.com/news/news7.htm
Hey Levi,
First, I’m really sorry about your loss… whatever the reason…
Regardless of if the files were copied to another computer, they are gone, which means they were erasen (not trying to be super obvious here, I’m just building my point).
When files are erasen, the HD space they occupied is not “blanked”, it is just declared empty in the Windows File System with 2 consecuences:
1) The files don’t show in the explorer
2) The system may use that space to write new files (or fragments of files)
I would reccomend not to keep using that computer because if no file is written in the HD space previously used by your lost files, the info is still there INTACT.
Do a web search for file recovery software. There is tons of it out there. I know this well because I once erased 10 years worth of work data. I worked like hell for 3 days testing file recovery programs, reading the help files, searching in forums but I got it all back using a US$ 70 program whose name I can’t recall.
Last a dumb question… have you looked into the windows trash can ?
Best of lucks buddy !