One of the most horrifying sounds any user can hear from their computer is the “clack-clack-clack” of a hard drive that has just given up, taking all saved data with it. But if there’s anything as bad, it’s discovering that the latest update to software we depend on has deleted our files. That’s what happened to professional photographer and videographer Dave Cooper. A bug in Premiere Pro wiped out more than 500 hours of video with an estimated value of $250,000, and Cooper intends to take Adobe to court.
Our readers are likely aware of the delays suffered by the latest Windows 10 update, known as 1809. A significant number of users discovered that during installation, the operating system deleted all files in the personal documents folder. The worst part is that under the Windows Insider program, many testers warned Redmond about the bug, but for some reason it didn’t receive enough priority. Logically, these quality control issues aren’t limited to Microsoft. The vision of “software as a service” leads to very frequent updates, and there will always be bugs escaping initial detection. The real conflict arises when they cause major damage. For example, what would you do if a program made you lose $250,000 in files?
The Bug That Destroyed Seven Years of Work
That’s exactly what happened to Dave Cooper. The $250,000 is an estimated calculation after the destruction of about 100,000 individual clips, equivalent to 500 hours of video captured between 2010 and 2017. Like many other professionals, Cooper uses Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017. Version 11.1.0 of the software has a redundancy feature that saves video backups in a “media cache” folder while working on a project. Due to the high storage impact of that feature, Cooper told Premiere Pro to create that cache inside a folder called “Videos” on an external hard drive, which had all his files. When the user finishes, it’s common to tell the software to empty that cache to recover space. The feature was only supposed to purge the contents of the media cache folder, but what it actually did was delete everything inside the “Videos” folder that hadn’t been edited or opened in the last 90 days. About seven years of work.
Adobe’s Response and the Lawsuit
Adobe acknowledged the bug in May 2017 and released update 11.1.1 to fix it, but still warned users not to combine the media cache with their personal folders. As expected, Cooper filed a class action lawsuit against Adobe in the California district seeking compensation for himself and other users who may have lost data due to this bug. Several reports about the error appeared on Adobe’s forums, but it’s most likely that a settlement will be reached outside the legal system. Anyway, there’s no lack of criticism towards the user’s backup policy, or rather, its absence. If we truly store the equivalent of $250,000 in files, being redundant when making backups isn’t enough: We must be paranoid.
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