Saving a project has resulted in duplicates of everything

JJ OS XL has been showing some eccentric behavior regarding saving, which is annoying and worrying as I have a gig coming up soon.

The Project I'm working on is about 1 year in the making and it's quite complex. Every time I make changes, when I close it I "Save Entire Memory 2" in a folder dedicated to that project. Recently I've noticed there are duplicates of all the folder contents (sequences and songs, programs, samples etc.) floating around outside the folder. Bit scared to delete anything and have lots of space on the CF card so just left it as is. Yesterday, I opened up the project from the appropriate folder, made various changes, went to "save the entire memory 2", it saved to the "Project" that was floating around outside the folder, not the one in the folder which until then I had been working on. Opening the floating project had the most recent changes I'd made, but was missing samples. Opening from the project in the folder, as expected, didn't have the most recent changes, but it had also gone back to a version of the project I hadn't used for ages. Not entirely as it still had the recent samples and sequences but, seemingly randomly, it had reverted back to some old filter automation on one of the tracks.

To cut a long story short, I've ended up with 2 versions of the same project where neither of them are complete. Not ruling out human error here, but I'd like to know the best way to avoid this mess in the future.

I've also ended up with 2 projects within the one folder: "Stars" (i.e. one that I named), and also one just by default called "Project 1". Again, afraid to lose any work, I didn't want to delete anything. So, actually, there are 3 running projects for this one: "Project 1" and "Stars" within the folder, and another "Project 1" floating outside the folder.

so, if the latest save just went to the Project 1 floating outside the folder, can I now just delete everything that's in the folder and just use the 'floaters', create a new folder and chuck the floaters in there? And how do you people always save your stuff? You do a "save entire memory 2"? Then, when you open it, do you just open the whole folder, or go into the folder and just open the project?

Sorry about the long and convoluted post. Difficult to explain clearly what's happening as I don't really get what's happening!

If you read this far, thank you!

Not sure if it's a bad disk or human error, but can I ask why you are scared to try fixing it? It's not like you can't first make a couple of back ups of your CF card on your computer. You can then try merging the two projects and will still have the untouched originals if you need them.

I'd like to know the best way to avoid this mess in the future

Back up your CF card every day by connecting your MPC to your computer via USB - at the very least, backup your currently active project every day. Keep a daily archive so you have multiple versions to fall back on. You cannot rely on a single CF card to store all your hard work.

If you current card is going bad, then it's time to get another, in fact buy two new cards so you always have a spare to fall back on.

MPC Tutor, thanks for the quick reply. The CF card is pretty new. It's a SanDisk 2GB. Getting another one as a safety net sounds like a good plan.

In theory, I get what you mean about merging the two projects. Not sure how I would do that in practice though, other than manually loading and recording the missing stuff into one of the projects. Could you expand on that? Is there some simple way to merge 2 projects? Am I overlooking something obvious? Forest and trees…?

Thanks for the tips on backing up. My MPC is set up in a studio and when I go home I just take the CF card home, hook that up with a card reader to my desk top for backing up samples etc. Same result as hooking up the whole MPC to back up, isn't it?... without the hassle of carting the thing about unnecessarily.

Still a mystery as to why the contents of the folder got duplicated. Seemed to start when I noticed there were 2 projects within the folder ("Stars" and "Project 1") and the 'easy' way to get into all my work was, instead of opening the folder and loading the 'Project', (as I do with other tunes which, incidentally, have never had this duplication issue - touch wood!) I selected the whole folder and hit "Do it" from there. There, I suppose it loaded everything from both projects within that folder. But then, when it came to saving, maybe it didn't know which project to save it to and spazzed out made a duplicate(?)

I think it's better to load a PRJ file than just whole folder.

sometimes when i am not paying enough attention i will think I'm saving a beat to my folder, but i actually will have just scrolled to that folder and clicked save, so the beat gets saved outside the folder. so make sure you are inside your folder before you save.

i also use save entire memory 2.