Saving EVERYTHING in one fell swoop?

So, call me user interface unfriendly but....
I lost a LOT of my project when I went to SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY on my MPC 5000.
When I recalled the project, my sequence and sample data was GONE!
What? Yeah...I guess I should have RTFM right? How misleading to offer up a SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY option on the 5000 (I came from the 2000xl) only to have it NOT SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY! Anyway, very misleading verbiage on the part of Akai, but I am now off my soapbox.

After RTFM, I see the manual states on page 168

"You can save sample/program/ALL files at the same time. When you save the data, a project file will be saved, as well as a sample, program and ALL files. The project file does not have actual sample or sequence data, but it has the
information about the sample/program/ALL files that are saved when you save the data.

OK, so my question is this:
How do I save everything so it will load back up into the MPC 5000 just as I left it?
I'd prefer a one hit wonder, meaning I don't have to Load an .all file, then an .ipt file, then an .prj file and so on..its a bit tedious that way......would rather just Load using one command and have everything come back into memory as I left it:
1) sample programs
2) sequence data
3) song data
For live work, having to do it the way I am now is time consuming...Loading each file in individually...

If anyone knows of some kind of streamlined way to save everything in memory without having to resort to saving and loading three different file types, please let me know as perhaps I am missing something here.
Thanks for any advice you can offer!

cw2scogg wrote:How misleading to offer up a SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY option on the 5000 (I came from the 2000xl) only to have it NOT SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY! Anyway, very misleading verbiage on the part of Akai, but I am now off my soapbox.

'Save entire Memory' does indeed save everything just as you left it - simply load up the PRJ file and you are back where you were just before saving it. Always works for me (just about the only thing that does work on an MPC5000...).

Possibly a one off glitch, possibly a corrupt disk, possibly files got renamed accidentally. Check to see if everything is there in the folder where you saved the prj - they should all be there - samples, programs, ALL file. in your computer, open the PRJ in a text editor - it should list all the files that it will load, e.g.



Make sure those files are all there.

Thank You thank You thank You
I will try this and see if all the files you mentioned are there
Now then, should I create a 'new folder' when doing this?
I usually work one song at a time then would like to save
everything together in that song:
all the individual samples assigned to the pads and the program(S) that contains those samples, the sequence and song data, as well the effect etc.
If SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY does that then I must have missed something the time before as the Pgm files and samples and sequence/song data show back up.
Because of this, I have saved EVERYTHING (pgm/prj/all/ipt/.50s) just to sure but I am hoping the SAVE ALL PROGRAMS AND SAMPLES function will save it all as you stated so will test run and get back to let you know thank you for your quick reply!

You can only have a single project file saved in any one folder - if you've saved multiple projects in one folder, this could be the cause of your problem.

Always use a dedicated folder for each project you work on.

You are right! THAT solved it. My problem was I was not making a new folder for every new Project that I was saving under the SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY option and it somehow corrupted things. Now, everytime I make a new song, I save all the Programs/Sequences/songs etc etc using the SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY COMMAND but ensure that I choose the CREATE NEW FOLDER? Option when I do this the first save and this saves EVERYTHING into its own folder. I tested it and everthing loaded back up just I left it. Thank you for that advice. The key was CHOOSING 'YES' when asked to make a new folder when I choose to SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY project. Phew..I left my MPC on for weeks afraid I would lose all my work again if I didn't meticulously SAVE everything..man I feel like such a chump...good thing I didn't have a power outage!
I noticed it isn't necessary to make a new folder after initially doing a SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY Command , only the first time I save it. After that, I don't save entire memory nor replace same samples but do save it again if I have made any changes or edits that I want to keep. which leads me to my next question

If I want to simply save an alternate version the song I am working on to which I have arranged sequences into an alternate arrarangeme How can I keep the alternate versions in the same folder yet rename them so I have saved two or three versions of the same song, just different sequence orders in the 'song mode'. Do I just do a SAVE ALL SEQS AND SONGS then rename the song as say blah blah ver 2 in same folder? Thanks for all your help..this has made my day!

The issue is that the 'all seqs' file that is saved as part of any project, by default, always has the same name (ALL_SEQS&SONGS.all), even if you choose a different project name when saving 'entire memory'.

So if you load a project, make an alternative version and 'save entire memory' with an alternate project name, the resulting ALL file will still be called 'ALL_SEQS&SONGS.all', so basically both projects will now share that same ALL file.

Clearly you need each project to have it's own unique ALL file.

You cannot select a new ALL file name when 'saving entire memory'. I believe there is a workaround though. Before saving entire memory, go to 'Save All Sequences' and highlight the 'ALL_SEQS&SONGS.all' name, and rename it to something different. Save it to the same project folder. Now save entire memory using an alternate project name. Now (I believe) this new project will be associated with this alternate ALL file (while the original project will be associated with the default ALL_SEQS&SONGS.all file).

However, these two projects will still share the same samples and programs so if you intend making changes to samples or programs, these changes will also be shared, which in some cases may not be desirable. To avoid this you would have to rename any programs or samples you change.

While not efficient in terms of file storage, it's easier to just place each version of a project in a new sub folder within the main project folder. As the 5000 has a nice big hard drive, it's not really a problem IMO.

I agree that the best thing to do in order to save an 'Alternative' version of a 'Song' arrangement is to create a sub-folder within the main folder of the SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY Project. In this I can change up programs, effects settings, sequences and 'Song' arrangements and have them NOT corrupt the original Save Entire Memory project. You are right, when using the SAVE ENTIRE MEMORY command you aren't given the opportunity to rename it so if one is new to the MPC 5000 saving paradigm they could inadvertently keep writing over previous projects and lose hours of production because they didn't know better in creating a new folder for every New song. Thus was my dilemma but its a mistake I will only make once!

Thank everyone for all that great information: You answered my questions a thousand times faster and more completely than Akai ever has done in the past I must admit!
Cheers