Traktor: Hard Drive Crash - Recovered Tracks but Cue Points Are Gone

The hard drive on my Macbook Pro crashed recently and I had to install a new 1TB SSD in it. I was able to recover all of my music from my old hard drive using a toaster, but when I load them into Traktor, all of my cue points and other tags are not there.

I am using Traktor Pro 2 and I import all of my music through iTunes.

I have searched far and wide on the web and found various different explanations as to where Traktor stores the tags like cue points and BPM. So far none of them seem to be accurate.

I have read and was told on the NI forum by a member there that the tags are stored in the MP3 file itself but if this was true then all of the tracks copied over from my old drive would have the cue points and other information, they do not.

I wrote to NI support and was pointed to a page in the knowledge base with instructions on how to import the old collection from Traktor on my old hard drive and then run a consistency check. I tried that and it did not work.

This is the page:
http://www.native-instruments.com/en...base/show/813/

I also read that tags for my collection were stored in the .nml file in the Traktor folder. So deleted my current .nml folder in Traktor and imported the old .nml folder from my old drive and ran a consistency check. The result again was no change to my tracks having any cue points or tags.

Can anyone out there help me figure this out? I invested a huge amount of time analyzing and setting cue points in all of my tracks and I really don't want to do it all over again.

Nope, it's not saved on the MP3.
Traktor makes it's own tag for traktor specific functions over and above ID3 tag info and saves it in nml catalogue file.
In my own opinion, I think It's down to location of tracks, they need to be in the exact same directories as they were previously. If you have the nml, try 'importing' it, instead of just replacing it. I understand you may be forcing traktor to read something that it can't associate with tracks.
Did you ever 'export' your nml before?
If not, then you may be stuck.
I'd recommend exporting the collection .nml periodically without the tracks.

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I never exported my .nml before on my old hard drive. I can see the old .nml on the old hard drive. How do I go about importing it? I see the option to import my old collection in the browser tree but not the .nml.

The export file by default is nml, so importing it is just a matter of copying it to your new drive, and try it. If your drive crashed, it may be affected. Directory tree needs to be exactly the same as it was before for it to work

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I brought the files onto my new hard drive into a folder and I'm now trying different combinations of "import another collection" followed by "consistency check" followed by "relocate". I'm trying the .nml file first but Traktor support sent me instructions for importing collections with dates that are in the "collection" folder so I'll try that next. When I import another collection it gives me a choice of choosing between using the "file" or "collecttion", do you know which one I should be choosing?

One thing I find interesting is that it's showing all of my tracks as being locked, even though I haven't locked them since importing them into Traktor. Why would it keep that setting but none of my cue points? I can see now that all of the tracks that I purchased since my drive crash that were never imported into Traktor before this are not locked. Only the tracks that were imported into Traktor on my old drive are locked, very interesting. Traktor is seeing something about my old tracks. Is the "lock" stored differently that other information like cue points.

Import collection,
As far as I know, Traktor keeps all track info together..

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I got it back!!! I was trying different combinations, first I imported .nml and clicked "file" and nothing changed so I did it again and chose "collection" and after running a consistency check the cue points are there. I came back to let you know that I got it fixed and it looks like you are confirming what I had tried as the right course of action. Thanks DJ AdeSands for your help, it is much appreciated. Now I just need to figure out the best way to back up or export my collection information so this doesn't happen again.

No sweat my friend, glad the issue's been sorted.
To answer your query, Backup both. In the meantime though, export your collection to .nml and keep it somewhere away from your HD, probably with your music backup, So if this headache happens again you'll know how to retrieve it.


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