I feel your pain - really. Yes, Audacity’s crash recovery is usually very reliable, but computer systems are imperfect.
There’s a long topic here about a similar issue, and many steps to see if recovery was possible (spoiler - it wasn’t): https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/audacity-crashed-it-didnt-restore-the-project-now-all-of-the-audio-is-gone-how-do-i-get-it-back/59667/1
Some years ago I was working for a company that specialized in media production with fast turnaround time. At any one time I could have 30 or more separate client projects on the go. My main machine was a purpose built PC connected to a mixing desk and a rack of mass storage devices (RAID drives). The PC did not need to be particularly fast, but it did need to be rock solid, so there were few compromises in the selection of components.
Even so, PCs are unreliable. Live interviews were always done on at least two machines at the same time - usually the PC and a backup on a solid state recorder. Recording was only about 5% of the work - the rest was editing, documenting and back-up, back-up, back-up. It’s one thing to lose half an hour’s work, but catastrophic to lose a client’s entire project which could be several weeks work and unrepeatable.
At least once per hour I would create a NEW backup of the entire project - not overwriting the most recent, but a totally new backup. For projects that required lots of work I would have a series of projects:
client-id-date-001
client-id-date-002
client-id-date-003
…
On completion of the project, the most recent version, plus all source materials and documentation would be archived with the client’s job details, and only then would the interim back-ups be deleted.
For home use it is not usually necessary to be a rigorous as that, but when working on big projects it is still important to have an effective backup strategy to protect against disaster.
Also, ensure that you are using the latest version of Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/