I feel like I’m missing something basic. I am moving Audacity files to external drive as I need hard drive space. Question I can’t find answer for: is it necessary to retain the _data folders or is the aup3 file enough? The folders are significant in size.
To my knowledge, an .aup3 file contains everything needed. There is no _data folder.
But an .aup file definitely needs the corresponding _data folder in the same directory.
However, it is probably a better idea to export everything as .aiff, .wav or another lossless format before. It might be that your .aup/.aup3 files won’t survive the transfer.
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Gotcha. I think I was missing the distinction between aup vs aup3.
Thanks!
If all I’m trying to retain is audio from a streaming twitch program, is exporting as .aiff or .wav the universal files of choice?
You can export your audio in whatever format you like. While .aiff and .wav are “lossless” formats, .mp3, for example, is “compressed” and the files are much smaller. If you do not need to work on the audio in future, you can export to .mp3. I bet, if you chose a decent quality in the export dialog (minimum 128 kbps, better 192 kbps) you won’t hear the difference.
The Audacity files (.aup/.aup3) are no real audio files and they can only be used by Audacity. .aiff, .wav, .mp3, etc. can be used by most (if not all) audio programs. And they tend to grow every time you use them because they save all your actions to make undoing them possible.
If you have been using Audacity for a very long time, there used to be data folders that had to be saved with the data. That is no longer the case, so as long as you don’t want to save really, really old stuff, don’t worry about it.
Just note that you can’t work “live” from an external or network/cloud drive (at least not reliably). So save to your internal dive and copy it to the other drive and copy it back before opening (if you haven’t already saved a copy there).
And it strongly agree with the suggestion to export to AIFF or WAV, whether you make a project file or not. These “standard” audio formats are simpler and more robust than AUP3 files.