Pc crashed, saved files were deleted. Why?

My pc crashed while Audacity was open. All of my saved files in the project disappeared. The weird thing is, everything I had done that day, that was not saved, is still there. (The audio files are, but Audacity doesn’t know what to do with hem, I asume 'cause the actual placement was never saved.)
Why would files that are already saved simply disappear?

Is there any way whatsoever to get these back? I’m missing 602 or so files (according to Audacity). Where could they have gone? There’s also 726 orphan files, but when I open them manually they’re all from today (aka trash). But I couldn’t care less for those. Already bought and tried easeUS for recovering out of desperation. It recovered 100 or so files, but there’s still no sound.

If there’s no way to undo this, could someone explain why this even happened? Why’d it delete my files just because my pc crashed. Every other program I’ve used I just open my previous save and I’ve lost an hour’s work, not 50.

It did ask me to get files from the Appdata temp recovery, but that didn’t work. I assumed I could just open the previous save though, so I declined after a few tries. Dumb idea. Now those files are gone too.

In advance, thanks. I’m sort of desperate, this thing is going to be nearly impossible to re-create.

Error log:

22:05:19: Audacity 2.1.3
22:05:19: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
22:05:19: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries from system paths. File name is ‘avformat-55.dll’.
22:05:19: Looking up PATH environment variable…
22:05:19: PATH = ‘C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\iCLS Client;C:\Program Files\Intel\iCLS Client;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\DAL;C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;C:\Program Files\Intel\Intel(R) Management Engine Components\IPT;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\Users\Joakim\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;’
22:05:19: Checking that ‘’ is in PATH…
22:05:19: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
22:05:19: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
22:05:19: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: den angitte modulen ble ikke funnet.)
22:05:19: Loading avutil from ‘’.
22:05:19: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: den angitte modulen ble ikke funnet.)
22:05:19: Loading avcodec from ‘’.
22:05:19: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘.dll’ (error 126: den angitte modulen ble ikke funnet.)
22:05:19: Loading avformat from ‘avformat-55.dll’.
22:05:19: Error: Failed to load shared library ‘avformat-55.dll’ (error 126: den angitte modulen ble ikke funnet.)
22:05:19: Error: Failed to load FFmpeg libraries.
22:05:19: Error: Failed to find compatible FFmpeg libraries.
22:05:20: Warning: Missing data block file: ‘C:\Users\Joakim\Desktop\lost jead head_data\e00\d04\e0004bbd.au’
(Then there¨’s another billion missing files)

I’m missing 602 or so files

I’m not sure I understand that one.

Audacity saves your show as a series of 6-second sound snippets. If the machine goes down in the middle of editing, some of those files can become corrupted. That’s the orphan files thing. I don’t know I’ve ever heard of flushing files away altogether.

Do you know why the machine went down?

Does Windows?

That kind of chaos can be caused by a drive going bad.

Did you lose any original performance work?

It is recommended you Export any original performance works as perfect quality WAV (Microsoft) backup files before you start to edit with them. New Audacity Projects are not recommended for this.

One of the heavier Windows people may drop by.

Koz

Hi, sorry, I should have been more clear about that.
My pc (laptop) got a little knock, and turned off. (whups!) It’s on a SSD, so I asume the power was cut for a split second or something? I’m not a computer-person.

I’m really confused, because I belive all my files are now orphan files, even though I had saved several times during the past week. Everything I’ve saved is not in the folder at all, but the things I had not saved are still there. (Hadn’t saved at all that day, because nothing worked out decently.) In fact, some sub-folders disapeared completely.


“It is recommended you Export any original performance works as perfect quality WAV (Microsoft) backup files before you start to edit with them. New Audacity Projects are not recommended for this.”
I should have, but unfortunateley I did not. I had a lot of tracks as well, probably too many. My own faulth, but hoping for some sort of solution nevertheless.

Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:

If you have a serious Windows problem, you’re right out of my world. I’m not a Windows person.

Koz