Extra storage space consumed BEYOND temporary files and new audio tracks generated

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

Hi,

Recently, I started to face the following issue (I don’t think this issue occurred earlier). It would be much appreciated if anyone can please provide some insights / suggestions for resolving the issue.

Every time Audacity is used, it consumes extra storage space in my computer BEYOND any temporary files generated (and then deleted) and new audio tracks generated by exporting.

Basically, my computer storage is materially consumed even when (1) no new audio files have been generated; (2) no Audacity projects have been saved; and (3) Audacity has been closed fully / any residual temporary files have been manually deleted (anything in C:\Users\MY-USER-NAME\AppData\Local\Audacity\SessionData). This happens even when I am sure the computer is not running any other programs that may generate new large files / consume the storage.

It appears that approximately twice as much space is consumed as compared to the size of the subject temporary files. For example, when I edited a long radio recording file, it ended up generating appx. 40GB of temporary files. However, besides this, it consumed another 40GB storage somewhere (total of 80GB consumed). After the temporary files were fully deleted, the available space on my storage increased by 40GB, but in total, the HDD space was reduced by 40GB (first, 80GB space was consumed, and then only 40GB was recovered after the deletion of the temporary files, keeping the other 40GB somewhere).

The same issue occurred when I tried with other shorter audio files with simple editing only – when 1GB of temporary files were generated, the HDD space decreased by 2GB, and then after the deletion of temporary files, 1GB was recovered, but the remaining 1GB could not be recovered.

I am not able to find why and where the additional space consumption occurs besides the ordinary temporary files. Regular folder search (with the setting to show system files also) and disk clean up did not help… If anyone has any insights regarding this issue, could you please share?

Thank you very much!

2

Which version of Audacity? (Look in “Help menu > About Audacity”)

4

When you’re deep into editing audio, Audacity can rack up quite a bit of extra data behind the scenes. Think of it like a loop backup - it’s keeping track of your project’s history and allowing you to undo changes or recover stuff if things go sideways.

Here’s the deal: Audacity saves a bunch of information as you work, like previous versions of your project, undo steps, and sometimes even cached data to speed things up. So, even if your project file size seems small, all that background stuff adds up.

If you’re tight on disk space, keep an eye on where Audacity stores these backups. Sometimes they can hang around longer than you think, eating up valuable gigs. It might be worth checking Audacity’s settings to see if you can adjust how often it saves backups or where it stores them.