XDCAM transfer ate my wedding?

[Cinemano]

HELP!

I noticed i couldnt find anywhere my wedding video of my own wedding.
A friend filmed it for me with the EX1. I transfered them to Final Cut just to have a look using the only way i knew back then, the XDcam transfer plugin for final cut.

Some days later i had to edit a job and noticed the thumbnails of my wedding were still up there in xdcam window.. So i used "remove" to have only my work there.

Months later i noticed i cant find my wedding anywhere then a chill went down my back.. did XDCam ERASE my orginal files without my permission???

We broke an external hard drive so IM HOPING its in that one, and that i just need to repair that drive.. but if its in the other hard drive i though it was in.. im screwed!!
Please someone let me know if XDCAM touches your original files, or does it just remove the Proxy files it created for final cut?? Im hoping they are in the broken drive..

[adamr316]

I can't say for sure as I don't use XDCam Transfer but if you used "Remove" then it sounds like it was you who deleted the files...if that's the case...not Transfer. If "Remove" is what it sounds like to me that was giving permission for file deletion.

I hope you can find your wedding files somewhere. Just do a "*.mp4" search on every hard drive you have to make sure. It's a shame if you've lost your wedding video due to a mistake like this but hopefully this will serve a lesson to some others. A proper tapeless workflow requires at least two copies of everything! And just as Sony suggests, use Clip Browser to transfer files...not Mac or Windows Explorer.

About two weeks after I received my EX1 (when I filled my memory cards and was sick of only having one copy of my files) I went out and bought two TB firewire/USB/eSATA external drives for about the cost of one 8GB SxS memory card. One drive is the "work" drive and the other is a mirror drive. When I'm finished editing for the day or when transferring files that other drive gets all the files that the work drive has. If one of those crashes I still have one good drive left and can just go out and buy a new one for about $250 (maybe cheaper as space/cost ratios continue to plummet).

If it were my wedding I'd have also backed up the files to some dual-layer DVDs as data and stored them offsite at a friend or family member's house. Clip Browser (and maybe Transfer) has an option to split directories into various media types, including single and dual layer DVD recordable media.

[Mike70]

Remove should only de-mount the drive from XDCam transfer. I'd check the drive the files were originally on.