I was busy editing a .aup file in Audacity when the system crashed, on re-opening I was prompted with the Auto Recovery option but when proceeding it crashed again.
I then skipped the recovery, thinking I’ll just make the edits again as I wasn’t that far into the project, but then lost the audio recording completely.
Now, if I open Audacity I’m prompted with a “Missing Project File e08082a8.au - Inserting Silence” error message - but nothing was deleted from my side!
I tried Audacity project tools but get a ‘unable to open database file’ error.
I also checked the AppData temp folder but there’s nothing stored.
Is there any way to repair/recover my original audio?
I’ve imported the .au files and there are snippets of recording available but I don’t know which order to import these files in.
Probably not. The .aup file is a list of instructions how to make your show from all those little 6-second sound snippets in the _data folder. It doesn’t contain any sound by itself.
The computer actually crashed or Audacity crashed?
Did you export a safety WAV (Microsoft) or AIFF sound file of the work? Is there a backup of the original aup file and _data folder?
If you haven’t edited anything yet, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct a show from the time and date tags on the little au files. Note that on a stereo show, the files alternate left, right, left, right.
There was a valid programming reason why the au files are not sequentially numbered. The production people all wondered about the wisdom of doing it this way.
The minute you start editing, the au files become scrambled and that’s the end of the world.
A common cause of crashing is running out of room. Each time you edit, Audacity makes a copy of the whole show. If you need to Edit > Undo because of a mistake, Audacity doesn’t try to unscramble your last edit, it just plays you back the show before this one.
It’s really easy to misjudge how much room things are going to take. The instant the machine loses the file structure of the _data folder, you’re gone unless you made safety copies or backups along the way. That accounts for the missing au file.
FYI - The current version uses AUP3 files which are all-in-one and supposed to be more robust.
But people still sometimes have problems so I always recommend exporting as WAV or FLAC backup immediately after recording, whether you make an Audacity project or not. These regular audio formats are simpler and more robust than project files.