I record church services each Sunday using Audacity on a laptop that’s direct connected to the sound system. After about 7 Sunday sessions with no issues I experienced a "Cannot save project file. Perhaps C:UsersChurch UserDocumentsFull ServicesFull Service on M-DD-YY is not writable or is full. I’ve found other posts on this forum with somewhat similar circumstances. It happened again today. The twist on my problem is that when this error occurs, it blanks the first 20-30 minutes of the service. The duration is not consistent. It’s happened about 4 times now. Each time the first 20-30 minutes of the recording is completely eliminated.
I did try today to open a new Audacity window and copy the entire non-savable file into it and saving again. This worked. But again, only after I’d lost the first 24 minutes of the service.
There’s plenty of room on the drive. It shows 373 GB free.
I’m running Windows 7 Home Edition and Audacity v2.0.5
The twist on my problem is that when this error occurs, it blanks the first 20-30 minutes of the service.
How did you get between the error message which is permanent and final and the damaged save? You missed a step in there – maybe.
The desperation method is to Export the work as a high-quality WAV (Microsoft) first, and then Save the Project.
You should try recordings of birds and flowers just to get a show of the same duration as The Real Thing. Then Export the WAV and Save the Project. It would be fascinating to find the WAV missing the first half-hour as well.
If you open up a Word document or an Internet GIF or any other file, will the machine let you save it to that location?
And just to be clear. The first part of the show vanishes like it was never there, or you have 30 minutes of blank, straight blue lines followed by sound.
I can hear voices suggesting the possibility of an overly aggressive virus protection program. If you have your Norton turned up as far as it will go, it will try to critically inspect each file and fragment as it goes by, sometimes gumming up the works handsomely. Audacity works in Real Time and anything that gets in the way or slows it down can be very serious.
Have you done a Disk Test?
From fuzzy memory: Start > My Computer > right-click C: > Properties > …and then I lose it. Somewhere in those tools will be a way to test your disk. I don’t think it does a surface scan any more, that would take a week, but it does go through and make sure the locations and data it has about your files do, in fact, match the real thing.
It would be handy to know that they don’t match.
Koz
This sounds like Norton again. If you have Norton, try turning off its Windows temporary file cleaner and lodge a complaint with Norton. Let us know what they tell you to stop it happening.
The error check for the drive is at My Computer, right-click over the drive, choose “Properties”, then click the “Tools” tab. Error Checking and Defragmentation tools are there.
Gale
Thanks very much for the tip on Norton. That seems to have been the problem. I turned off the temporary file scanner right after your response and have not had the issue happen since that time.
Thanks again!