Rather then opening my .aup file (which was only 2 hours of audio) audacity opened a blank project and an error window with three options on it. It was saying something about my project having small orphan files attached to it and recommended i delete them and open the .aup file without them. Doing what audacity suggested i deleted the orphan files only to find out that it mistook all of the dependencies (under the “ProjectName_data” folder) as orphan files. It literally deleted every little bit of audio that made up this 2 hour recording and I’m not very sure at all how to get it back, it isn’t in the recycling bin or anywhere, it’s just gone. Does anyone know where audacity deletes ‘orphan files’ too? Or how i might get my audio dependencies back?
Please read the pink panel at the top of the page and let us know the version of Audacity (all three numbers) and version of Windows.
Was this project a recording that you had not edited yet or something you had been working on where you had applied effects and other edits?
If you are using Audacity 2.0.5 or earlier, it has a bug that projects will open with entirely orphaned audio in any tracks that have 2^31 samples or greater of audio. That amounts to just over 13.5 hours at 44100 Hz, but if you are using an extreme sample rate the limit is much lower (for example, not much over an hour and a half at 352800 Hz).
So to begun with what does “Hz” say above the Mute/Solo buttons on the tracks?
Do you recall how many orphan files Audacity mentioned? If it was only a few orphans, then the silenced audio after deleting the orphans is due to some other problem.
Current Audacity defaults to “continuing without deleting” orphans and says that deleting orphans is “permanent immediately” (which it is). The Recycle Bin is bypassed when deleting.
The only (theoretical) way to retrieve deleted orphans is to use file recovery software. As a general rule such software will only work if you recover immediately, if your drive is near empty and only if you have an old spinning hard disk drive (data on SSD’s with TRIM enabled cannot be recovered). And it is essential that the file names of the recovered files are not altered.
From where you are now, I suggest you attach the AUP file and the log file from Help > Show Log… so we can have a look at them. Please see here for how to attach files: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1
Gale