![r/ableton u/Silent_Moment_185
Lost a Year of Ableton Projects After Running a Terminal Script - Need Help Recovering Anything
[Question]
screwed up and I'm hoping someone here knows more than I do or can point me in the right direction.
I lost over a year's worth of music - full Ableton projects, sessions, recordings, everything - because I ran a Terminal script on my Mac M3 that deleted several folders permanently. I had asked ChatGPT to help me organize my music projects by folder/date, and it gave me a command that included this line:
rm -rf "$ROOT/Projects" "$ROOT/Sessions" "$ROOT/ Audio Files"
I didn't realize what it was doing and ran it without backing anything up. That command completely wiped out my Projects, Sessions, and Audio Files directories. Gone in seconds. No Time Machine backup, nothing in the trash. Just empty space.](/proxy/post_attachment/501335/01aecd7199.jpg "r/ableton u/Silent_Moment_185
Lost a Year of Ableton Projects After Running a Terminal Script - Need Help Recovering Anything
[Question]
screwed up and I'm hoping someone here knows more than I do or can point me in the right direction.
I lost over a year's worth of music - full Ableton projects, sessions, recordings, everything - because I ran a Terminal script on my Mac M3 that deleted several folders permanently. I had asked ChatGPT to help me organize my music projects by folder/date, and it gave me a command that included this line:
rm -rf \"$ROOT/Projects\" \"$ROOT/Sessions\" \"$ROOT/ Audio Files\"
I didn't realize what it was doing and ran it without backing anything up. That command completely wiped out my Projects, Sessions, and Audio Files directories. Gone in seconds. No Time Machine backup, nothing in the trash. Just empty space.")
@pikesley I wouldn't doubt it. Without knowing exactly how they prompted, or what the source data looked like, can't say whether just _deleting everything_ (which this particular line appaers 2 do) at some point is valid or not.
Its one thing to ask ai to whip you up a script that does something, its another thing to execute it blindly - on an irretrievable single source of valuable data - without reviewing or testing it first.
That's... like common sense.
@tezoatlipoca @pikesley the fact their describing it as “a Terminal script” suggests to me they’re not in any way qualified to review it, or to know that it maybe needed to be reviewed in the first place.