new MacBook, error message "no such file"

[pearblossomhwy]

Using my new MacBook, I am trying to open Audacity files from a Lacie hard drive that has the contents of my old iBook. The files open -- with some dropouts -- and I get the following error message:

"Can't open file [file name] (error 2: No such file or directory).

Some of the files will play, others not. I'm not sure what's going on here. If Audacity doesn't think the file exists, why am I seeing and sometimes even playing the file? and is there anything I can do to recover the dropouts?

Thanks!

[kozikowski]

Let me rephrase that a little.

"I'm trying to move an Audacity Project from an old computer to a new one."

Open up your AUP file in TextEdit and read it. Every time you pass a listing that looks like this:

aliasfile='/Users/koz/Desktop/piano2.wav'

That is a very specific location where Audacity is expecting to find one of your sound clips. There may be thousands of those. An Audacity Project is a cloud of files and they're all coordinated by the AUP file. If you didn't bring everything over in the exact folder structure you had before, Audacity won't be able to find all the pieces.

The only way to move one perfect sound file from place to place is to Export As WAV...

Koz

[kozikowski]

As a compulsive engineer I must point out that it's possible to manually change the AUP file in TextEdit to reflect where you actually put your sound clips after you moved them. For example:

/FireWireDrive/MyMusic/MyClips/Piano2.wav

The next time you launch Audacity, it will read your changes and magically find all your sound clips.

Koz

[kozikowski]

And as a compulsive Mac user, I can ask you if you made a Disk Image of your old system drive before you got rid of it?

Just before my iBook licked the last ice cream cone, I was able to connect a FireWire drive and Image the whole system drive. As it turned out, I didn't need it, but if I discovered in horror that I lost something, I could blow the image back out to another empty drive and collect all the bits and pieces I needed. Disk Imaging is one of the reasons I stopped using PCs so much. Imaging on a PC is expensive and painful and prone to errors.

An Image of your system drive should still have all the original clips, captures, and sound bites in the original order.

Koz

[pearblossomhwy]

Yes, I have an image of the old drive, that's what's on the lacie drive. I'm not trying to move anything--at least not yet. I'm just trying to open up what's on the lacie drive connected to the new computer. that's why it's not making much sense to me that I'm getting these messages...

[kozikowski]

You used the wrong words. If there was an image on your LaCie drive, you wouldn't be able to open up any music files. An Image is a single file with the extension DMG (Disk Image). It's a compressed compilation of everything on your hard drive and you can't go in later to "get" stuff unless you restore the image to another hard drive. Then all the original files come back to life.

Images are produced using the Disk Utilities on the original install disk for your machine (or anybody's machine really). Boot the machine to the install CD, drill down to Disk Utilities, select your system drive, run Make New Image and point to your FireWire drive for a destination.

JimmySystemDrive.dmg Mar 15, 2008, 4:30 PM 43.5 GB

That would be typical of an Image of my machine "Jimmy." Jimmy has a 60 GB hard drive inside. Disk Utilities will compress the data where it can without causing damage.

If you did a straight Copy of the original drive, you may not have gotten all the original sound clips back in the original order or location. Even worse, some portions of the System will not copy--hence the value of the DMG which gets everything.

Koz