New to Logic Pro and I’m terrified to work

I’ve been learning the Logic craft for about a month now, and I’m suddenly getting corrupted files and losing entire projects because none of the troubleshooting I’m researching is working. Logic is pretty a pretty basic DAW if you’re familiar with just about any others in the world, but saving appears to be an issue and corruption of projects is a major one.

 

I’m saving backups and backups of backups on external SSDs as well as the HDD and the cloud, but I just lost a project that Logic isn’t allowing me to open even if I choose backups. The audio files in the alternatives folder are gone as well.

 

How does anyone confidently work with this program and avoid running into these game changing problems?

How are you saving the projects? Do you have more than one project at a time open? Which version of: Logic, macOS, computer, are you using? What interface for the audio? How are the drives formatted?

There's no reason you couldn't safely and reliably save your project files in Logic, and there's no known issue that makes Logic more prone to do so than any other app out there, so you need to troubleshoot your issue. So rAC is on the right path: give us more details as to your saving workflow.

There's no reason you couldn't safely and reliably save your project files in Logic, and there's no known issue that makes Logic more prone to do so than any other app out there, so you need to troubleshoot your issue. So rAC is on the right path: give us more details as to your saving workflow.

 

 

I’ve been reading a lot of older threads on here since posting the original comment and I’ve come across a couple where you do a great job of explaining why corruption tends to happen and how you work around it with your workflow.

 

I haven’t been able to salvage the one song, unfortunately, but I THINK I have a better idea of how to implement a better workflow.

 

The first project that I had corrupted occurred when I physically tried dragging an effect plugin from one track to another. It was a 3rd party plugin, if that matters. I was able to salvage most of that project by going into the alternatives folder and physically pasting tracks back into a new project. The second one wasn’t corrupt until I made the attempt to open it later in the day. I didn’t move anything from one folder to another or one drive to another between sessions, so I’m baffled on this one.

 

I always only have one project open at a time. I’ve been saving as Folders and keeping one backup only (this is something that I’m assuming I should change). I save, on average, every 10 minutes. I’m saving onto an external Samsung T5 500gb SSD. I’m running Logic Pro X on an iMac 21.5-inch iMac 3.2GHz, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD, i7 processor.

 

Judging by some Logic users workflow, It’s becoming clear to me that I’m going to need about 100TB to save all of my work.

There's no reason you couldn't safely and reliably save your project files in Logic, and there's no known issue that makes Logic more prone to do so than any other app out there, so you need to troubleshoot your issue. So rAC is on the right path: give us more details as to your saving workflow.

 

It probably helps to know that I’m a 43 year old indie guy that’s been recording on analog 4-tracks and reel to reels for the better part of 30 years now, so I’m new to not only Logic but computer based recording in general.

 

I’ve dumped analog backing tracks to a Roland VS-1824 dating back to 2002 and I’ve been mastering on Ozark for several years, but that’s been the extent of my digital experience up until exactly one month ago.

am hoping you're mastering with ozone, and watching ozark on netflix...

am hoping you're mastering with ozone, and watching ozark on netflix...

 

HA! I have Ozark on the brain I guess.

@Echoorbiter

You did not answer the important question about the format of your hard drives.

I’m saving onto an external Samsung T5 500gb SSD.

 

How is this drive formatted? Select the drive on the desktop, right-click and choose Get Info. Look at format.

 

MacOS Extended (Case Sensitive, Journaled). I’m going to research what exactly this means because, to no one’s surprise, I’m not as familiar with Mac as I am with Windows.

MacOS Extended is ok, but case-sensitive is not necessary and I've never used it.

For an SSD I would actually use APFS.

 

Do you use this drive just for your projects in general?

Excuse me for butting in. I have read the advice being given here with regard to formatting of the SSD. I have just got a Crucial X8 SSD which is formatted ExFAT. Should I reformat it to something different such as MacOS Extended or APFS? If so how would I do that?

Excuse me for butting in. I have read the advice being given here with regard to formatting of the SSD. I have just got a Crucial X8 SSD which is formatted ExFAT. Should I reformat it to something different such as MacOS Extended or APFS? If so how would I do that?

 

Yes, you should. Here are the instructions to format your disk: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

having a case-sensitive HFS disk is begging for trouble. You want it to be case-insensitive.

 

If it is case sensitive then "FileNameA" and "FilenameA" are two different files - fine for Unix systems but not so good for a system that has been case-insensitive since the beginning. You really need to have "FIleNameA" and "FilenameA" be the same file...otherwise things can get horribly mixed-up.

having a case-sensitive HFS disk is begging for trouble. You want it to be case-insensitive.

 

Ahh, no wonder I never used it. Thanks for the confirmation!

 

And for SSDs APFS is a better option, I suspect by now.

MacOS Extended is ok, but case-sensitive is not necessary and I've never used it.

For an SSD I would actually use APFS.

 

Do you use this drive just for your projects in general?

 

I only have 5 projects / songs (folders and content) saved onto the external SSD. I’ll look into switching it up to APFS.

I’ll look into switching it up to APFS.

 

Remember that re-formatting a drive will erase all its contents.

So copy all the content to another drive before you reformat to APFS.

Hi David

Thanks for the no-nonsense reply about reformatting the Crucial X8 SSD.

Can you or anyone else tell me why APFS would be better than Mac OS Extended (journaled)? The Apple Support link you sent seems to only suggest advantages to using Mac OS Extended (journaled) such as compatibility with older Mac OS. No mention of any advantage to APFS as suggested by triplets.

Hi David

Thanks for the no-nonsense reply about reformatting the Crucial X8 SSD.

Can you or anyone else tell me why APFS would be better than Mac OS Extended (journaled)? The Apple Support link you sent seems to only suggest advantages to using Mac OS Extended (journaled) such as compatibility with older Mac OS. No mention of any advantage to APFS as suggested by triplets.

MacOS Extended is an older, legacy file system. APFS is the current, more recent, new and improved file system. It's optimized for flash memory and SSD. It features multiple new features like clones, snapshots, full disk encryption, supports a larger max number of files, has better metadata integrity, which can become corrupted when suffering a system crash in MacOS Extended, and offers space sharing, a more flexible management of multiple volumes on the same device (vs the older disk partitioning of MacOS Extended).

Thanks for the positives for APFS

But what if I need to use the X8 SSD with my old iMac 21.5" running OSX High Sierra or even my iMac 24" running Snow Leopard?

APFS is compatible only with High Sierra and later. For Snow Leopard, you need to format your drive MacOS Extended.

High Sierra will read APFS, but earlier ones won't, so you'll need to bear that in mind. If compatibility with old stuff is important, leave it as the regular older format. Or you could always copy over stuff onto another non-APFS drive if you need to only occasionally access it from old systems.

 

All my externals are non-APFS, including my regular audio drive.

Thank you David and des99 for your advice.

You’re welcome!

Deleted as Des99 answered it better (I had not noticed the second page of the thread when answering).