This evening I accidentally deleted the _data folder. I put it in the Recycling BIn, then I EMPTIED the recycling bin. Later on when trying to download software to recover deleted Files (Recuva and EaseUS), I could only find an aup.bak file. and cfg file. I am not entirely sure what was in the _data folder but I am clearly in a bit of a mess. In addition I found a ton of .au files, which, when I recovered them and opened in Audacity, were only small snippets of some songs. I was creating a 45 minute sports warm-up mix and will be devastated if I cannot recover it.
I have recovered the aup.bak file but Audacity will not open it (as it is a text file) but I’m wondering what it is I should be looking for to pair with the original .aup file.
Moderator note: please do not double post. Unfortunately we have to moderate new users to avoid a torrent of spam, most annoying, some unpleasant and some downright dangerous. I removed the duplicate post for you.
If you indeed have the aup backup file and all the au files then you may be in luck.
You should rename the aup backup file to <your project name (whatever you called it)>.aup and put all the .au files in a folder called <your project name (whatever you called it)> - with the aup file and the data directory at the same folder level in your file structure. See this page in the Audacity Manual to understand Audacity projects: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audacity_projects.html
Note also if you are going to create a new _data folder that the AU files must be in the correct “d” folder (for example “d00” or “d01”) inside an “e” folder within the _data folder. You will only have a few “d” folders so in your case the “e” folder would be called “e00”.
If you are lucky the AU files may still be in the correct subfolder structure. If not, the fourth number (fifth character) in the name of the AU file tells you which “d” folder it should be in. For example a file called “e00010a3.au” would be in the “d01” folder.