Sorry to hear that. Did you uninstall Sound forge or are you going to continue to use it?

Sonic Foundry abandoned cd arch because of it's unreliabibility in ME. SF5.0 did not support it..and franky, I would never trust a "plug-in" like CD arch..if I also had other burning motors installed. XP on the other hand has a shared burning motor for windows..and I even deleted it..because the Nero works so well. My policy is to never have more than one program installed that can burn a CD. Sharing causes problems..in the case of CD arc, I always thought it to be too much trouble. Did you save your files? Check out in your SF folder for temp001/temp 002 etc in sound forge. These are recoverable..and possably the files you lost. Also..Never never never never burn a file that does not have a backup in another folder and/or drive. Why take chances? I also run a real time ..even to VHS hi fi if I have to, DAT, Multitrack etc..for safety.

Remember the old saying, poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

I once did a mastering session, (I always keep backups for a year..then I relieve myself of responsability after that) that got "lost in the mail". No problems on this end..I had 4 safetys.

Hope this helps you and I am not trying to come off brash..you should have known to make safteys.

Without them, their is no excuse. I even charge my clients for them..and will not give them up for a year. Period.

Bill, I had copies of the master audio files and needed to make changes to fades, gaps, and replace a couple of tracks, so a realtime, end to end backup would have done me no good. Most all apps have proprietary layout/session files, so porting the projects to another program also wouldn't work. I really don't know of a good way to backup absolutely any given session to port to another process or program without losing and hence recreating some editing and/or layout. I always backup actual audio files, masters, etc, and did have a CD master of both projects. That just doesn't solve the problem of having to recreate the layout, or at least part of it, to make new edits or revise individual tracks.

At the time I was already in the process of investigating other mastering apps, including Samplitude, which I have been using. I did recreate both masters in Samplitude. That is no problem, there just isn't an easy solution when an application refuses to run on a machine after working well for several years. These weren't critical losses for me or the client, just inconveniences for me (not the client), so no need to remind me of the importance of planning and backing up. I am very well aware of that. There are some things that you can't backup and plan for 100% - they just happen and you deal with it. If Sonic Foundry were still supporting CD Arch, there wouldn't have been a problem. I seriously doubt they dropped it because of WinME. That would be a pretty lame reason as plenty of other apps work perfectly well in Win98, ME, XP and 2000. Their focus on corporate and streaming technologies, as well as consumer products is a more likely reason, but that is just my assessment - you may know from SF's own personnel.

I also have Sound Forge 5.0, but I find Samplitude to be more powerful and full featured, so that will be my mastering/burning app from now on, along with Cool Edit Pro for some editing, analysis and sound design.

BTW, I have never burned a coaster. Never. Seriously. I've never had any problems with conflicts, but I also tweak my OS and remove extra background tasks. I also make sure my hardware config is optimized for audio, completely compatible, and in top performance.

My biggest gripe wasn't the loss of the project files, but the response I got from tech support, as well as the general attitude and product approach Sonic Foundry has taken. I've been on the other end of the phone in similar situations, and implying you don't care is the last impression you want to leave a customer with, even if the product is no longer supported and you can't really help them. The truth seems to be that Sonic Foundry has little interest in the pro audio market and this experience confirmed that. I was more than happy to move to another app and was planning to do so anyway. However, I would have preferred to be the one to decide which projects would be moved and when.

Regards,
Dedric

Understood..I want to aplogize if I came off to harsh.

I use two hard drives..so everything goes there...and here..per edit..can't trust those damn 'puters ya know!!