How to Find Missing Audio Files in FL Studio (EVEN If You Don’t Know Where They Are) 

This comment 🤙 solid solution.

Life saver

my boi you completely saved every single one of my old songs! I appreciate you more than you know!

yes this is what happened to me. the update fkd everything up. how do you get fl studio to search the whole c drive? does it auto scan or do you have to manually go through each folder. i still cannot find them. I've been using FL Studio since the early 00s.

@@bluebellbeatnik4945 Make the folder that fl studio searches the folder for your whole computer. basically have it search the whole computer instead of just the fl files

You bet! Super happy you were able to recover the old projects! Make some cool stuff 💪

@@ScaleAudio hey bro

@@jeffanderson2413 Hey 🤙

You bet! Happy the project was saved! 💪Thanks for the comment 🫡

Let me know when you drop your EP and I’ll check it out

Happy to help relieve some stress!!!

Glad it helped!! That’s awesome 💪

Happy to hear! Didn’t even think about that as a migration option 😬 genius 🤙

Happy to help! I am super happy that you were able to find your files. FL Studio reccomends to not have working files in cloud storage, however, it's always good to have backups in case your computer dies!

Honestly super awesome sentiment, thanks for taking the time to comment! Glad to be of assistance. Have a wonderful day!

Happy to help however I can!

Thanks for the comment! 💪

Happy to help where I can! Thanks for watching, I'm glad you got to save some projects! Make 🔥music!

Glad to hear it worked! Awesome 💪

Happy to hear you were able to find it!

Super happy it helped! Hope you like your new SSD 💪

Happy to help! Glad you were able to recover your project 💪💪💪

Thank you! 🙏

Heck yeah! That’s awesome!

200 projects saved is awesome! Glad you didn't lose them, thanks for dropping a comment!

Happy to be the solution 💪

Happy to help in any way I can!

Happy to help how I can!

@@hotboichilli happy to save a project my friend! Keep making cool music!

Happy to help! Thanks for watching!

@@Rarefill no you! Thank you for dropping a comment! 🫡

Here to serve 💪 Thanks for the like and comment!

💪💪

Did you manually delete the audio files? If you didn’t then you should add your whole hard drive to the folder area in this video and see if it fixes it.

@@ScaleAudio Same situation as this guy, I added the whole hard drive to the search and still nothing. All projects gone but lesson learnt...

@@ellisdavis5177 definitely a hard one, that’s forsure

Happy to help if I can! Thanks for the comment!

Sorry for the late response! I wish I had a good answer, but I have no idea. Sounds like a lot of manual work in order to unpack that one. Sounds like diversifying file names would be the best options since FL Studio doesn't seem to use other information to differentiate project samples.

Always happy to do what I can 🫡

Thanks for the sub! Happy to help!

Good luck! Let me know if you have any success!

@@ScaleAudio unfortunately it didn't work, next best thing I can think of is manually go into the motherboard and try to find each file individually

@@pimplepanda1932 if you take the hard drive out of your computer that died, you may be able to pull the data off it.

Sweet! So it's all working now? I know cloud drives can create issues; I try to steer away from them for FL Studio.

Here to help! 🫡

No fun!

Happy to help how I can! I appreciate the comment 💪 you’re the best kind of person! 🫡

@@ScaleAudio Thanks! Finally when I “recovered” the session we tried to put in a new folder to “save it better than before it was” but..not! 🤣 now we can’t open it (FL says that we have missing files, again) and inclusive with the Complete C:/ unity to find those files 🤦🏻‍♂️… hahaha thanks anyway really it worked for me at the first chance 😅 ✌🏼❤️

@@OfficialJayC 😳 no fun! At least you can always make more 🔥

You bet!

You bet! Happy to help how I can! 🫡

Happy to help! Keep making awesome music!

You bet! Happy to help!

Happy to help! Thanks for commenting 💪💪💪

I would check to make sure latency compensation is set properly in the mixer. You could try turning off all of your effects and see if that resolves it. If it does, you can go through them 1 by 1 until you find the culprit. I've also had days where I spent way too long on a track and came back and felt that way due to the fatigue from working on it so long.

@@ScaleAudio yeh thank you il have a look and I have a bounced copy that is all in time but when I open the flp it’s all over the place, I always save a file keep that running and then open the saved file in a new window and check it to make sure it’s all good and it was, very strange 😂 that’s for the reply though.

Happy to be of service!

Besides the moment it first opens, I am not sure of another way to open it. Sorry!!

Appreciate the comment!

💯You bet!

You bet! Thanks for the comment 💪

Super happy you were able to find them!

Here to help! Thanks for dropping a comment 💪

You bet! Thanks for the comment!

Let me know! That would be sick 💪

Sorry for the late response! Happy to help, thanks for the comment! 🙏

Happy to help!

@@ScaleAudio Now when I save it doesnt put it in the backup folder.... What do I do?

@@RobRuffMusic I would love to help out but I'm not 100% clear on what you mean. If you could elaborate further I'll do my best to give any positive insight I might have.

@@ScaleAudio nm I figured it out.

@@RobRuffMusic happy to hear you got it!

Happy to hear!

Happy to hear!

If you go to the "Project" settings tab in FL Studio, you can choose when you are asked for the "Project Folder". You can also choose the Project Folder for the current project via this menu. Once a Project Folder is chosen, you can click the button for "Copy used samples to project folder". This will copy the projects audio files to the folder your FL Project is in.

No thank you! I'm glad you decided to check out my video out of everybody elses. Appreciate you 💪

This is very interesting. It could definitely be due to you running low on space. May be a problem with FL itself. Could also be a failing SSD or HDD. If your disk has SMART statistics you could check those to see it's health. You could also try a "check disk" if you are using Windows. If you go down the Hard Drive troubleshooting path and have an SSD don't defrag the drive, it's bad for it.

this is happening to me rn did you fix it?

You bet! Thanks for commenting!

You are very very welcome! I’m glad this was helpful 💪

I remember searching for a way to do this before and not finding a successful method. I believe it will only open at the beginning of the project upon failure of locating the files in question. If you find a way, please let me know!

You bet! Thanks for commenting!

Great question, I wouldn't think so. FL Studio will generally install and run out of the "Program Files" folders. I'm unsure if this installation path is a requirement or not (if it is not a requirement then you may be able to tell FL studio to install to an external drive). I don't think you would be able to change where everything is saved after you have installed FL Studio because application files generally point to specific files within the intial directory you install to (such as C:\Program Files). This means if you move everything after the initial installation, the program will most likely fail to find items it is looking for in that original installation path and wont run properly. With that said, in theory, you may be able to install FL Studio to an external drive, however, you will most likely only be able to run it on the original computer you installed it on and not on any secondary computers. The reason for this is that software installations will generally edit things in what's called the Windows Registry. The Windows Registry is local to the device itself and these Registry changes allowing FL Studio to run wouldn't exist on a second device.

On the other hand, if you want to experiment with possibilities. You may be able to install windows on your external hard drive or create bootable media out of an operating system snapshot. If you use something like Ventoy, you can change a usb (for example) into a bootable device. If you save your operating system (with FL Studio installed) as it's own bootable media then you could in fact take FL Studio along with you as well as any local Registry changes. This is because you wouldn't be taking FL Studio with you. You would be taking your entire windows operating system with you. The only issue you might run into with this is audio driver problems. You may have drivers installed that will be incompatible with the device you are booting to.

You bet! Thanks for watching!

Hey, Your samples that are turning red and the audio clips that are featured in this video act the same exact way when not found. The solution should be the same as stated at 0:21 and forward. If you don't know where the files are, set a folder (in the location described in the video) to be your computers C: drive. This may take a long time to open the project, but it will guarantee that if the files exist on your computer they will load. If they don't, then either the names of the files themselves have changed or the samples were deleted somehow off your computer. At that point I'm not quite sure how to help. If you do manage to get the files to load, follow the steps in the video at 1:22 and forward. This will show you what folder the samples are in. After you find them remove the C: drive folder we made within FL Studio (if you don't then you will have long load times whenever you open FL Studio) and then replace the C: drive folder you just deleted with the folder your samples are in (the ones you just found by using the steps from 1:22 and forward). Besides the info above I'm not sure how else I'd be able to help. Generally, samples become lost when you change file names, move file folders, or delete files. Hope this info was helpful. Thanks for watching and engaging!

More than happy to help save a project!

Sorry for the late response. This would definitely be possible. If you migrate all of the audio files and add the folder they reside in to the "File Settings" page, it should add the samples back to the projects in which they are missing.

You bet! Thanks for watching and engaging 🤙

That's a hard one! I don't believe so. If your shorten the file names then idk that FL Studio will recognize the files to try and pull them into the project. You would most likely have to drag them back into the project one by one.

@@ScaleAudio found a fix, it was a windows problem. You need to bring your sample files closer to your C drive or whatever is your main storage device and thus shortening the search path. Works like a charm and i dont have to change names of thousands and thousands of sample files lol

I love you too 😂 happy to help 💪

You bet! Thanks for the comment!

🤣🤣🤣 Thanks lol

You bet. One drive is can definitely be a pain. FL Studio recommends avoiding using it if you can. I actually switched my fl studio files out of my one drive completely. If you decide that’s something you’re interested in you can do it from the file or folder settings tab.

@@masonhruby4104 if you go to file settings there should be an option for user data folder. With your stuff in the cloud, I believe you can right click the folder that has your audio and click “keep on device” and that should help as well if needed (I could be wrong though).

Just glad to help!

How many projects? Did you add the C drive as a folder?

If you go through Documents\Image-line or the program files\Image-line folders, they will most likely be in there. I don’t remember the exact file paths but you might be able to Google them. If you can’t find them in there, and adding your C: drive (or whatever drive has all your data) to the folder settings doesn’t work, they might be gone.

Thank will give it a try, i appreciate you taking the time to reply

@@ArtisolGG Happy to be of service!

You bet! 🫡

Here to help! 💪

This method will only work if the audio samples exist on your hard drive somewhere. If resetting your hard drive wiped all your samples and you never re-downloaded them, then it will not work. On the other hand, if after resetting your hard drive, you re-downloaded or moved all of your samples back onto the hard drive again. Then yes, this work.

Hey! Some organization might help using the feature that is shown 10 seconds into this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0XUDN6ZHheQ.html And if your scared of losing data you can get an external hard drive and back your projects up as shown in this video below: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XSR43tZkyhA.html Sorry for the late reply! Hope these help!

Happy to help! Thanks for clicking my video! 🫡🫡🫡

You bet!

You bet! Thanks for taking the time to comment 🫡

Thank you for commenting and watching 💪

Happy to help! Much love!!

You bet!

You bet! Thanks for dropping a comment 💪

Hope it was helpful 🤙

Happy to do what I can 🫡

Well that’s no fun. Not sure there is a way around that. Could maybe delete the wrong sample and then open your project so that it finds the correct one that has the same name. Then recover the one you deleted from the recycle bin.

Happy to help where I can 🫡 thanks for the comment!

No problem! Thanks for dropping a comment!

Most def!

I do what I can!!

Happy to help if I can 🫡 thanks for commenting!

Thanks for the comment. Sick photo by the way. It made me want to click your profile to check out your stuff. Took a listen to Minder Park and Friend 5ever. Good sound, keep it up!

@@ScaleAudio Thanks man! glad you enjoyed the songs!🥳

@@ScaleAudio appreciate the nice words!

You bet, thank you for commenting!

If you added your hard drive to the folder settings, I would let it do it’s thing. You probably have a Hard Disk Drive and a lot of files. Once it finds all your samples I would use FL to look at where they are stored, after that I would add those sample paths to the folder setting and remove the hard drive’s path.