I wrote a Bug Report, but thought I’d throw this here just in case.
Okay, I run Windows 7, I downloaded Audacity 2.0.3 about a week ago. For a few days, everything was good. I was recording a podfic, and because I was reading when I could I saved it into multiple files. I saved like an addict, and closed and opened the program many times successfully. Sometimes I did work with two windows open. In the end I taped all the pieces together into an hour long file which I was editing together. Today the program went bonkers.
My computer froze up. I rebooted. Ran Norton. When I opened the file I was working on, it told me it couldn’t find the data folder, and sure enough it’s missing (I’ve searched for it, but it’s disappeared. It’s a bit creepy). I had a back up, so I opened that up and got the error message I had orphan block files, I closed and without saving.
From my reading, as a leman, it sounds like Bug 137, though I can’t find much literature regarding that bug with the 2.0 releases, since most forum postings are from 2011. However, atop now sporadically losing block files( I checked and it’s happened to two more), now when I open some of my files if I press the playback button Audacity freezes and I have to close the program down. But…not all of them. Only, it seems, the ones I rerecorded to cover the files it’s lost and I cannot find as per several forums worth of instruction.
Sooo. Yeah. I’ve uninstalled and re-installed, but I don’t want to do anything a forum suggests that was a fix in 1.0 because, well, 2.0. Any suggests before I slit my wrists and call it a day?
If your computer froze up, it isn’t Audacity that is causing the problem, but some low level problem on your computer, possibly to do with drivers. Please see here for some help: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_errors.html#reboot .
Did you make the backup by creating a new folder then copying the AUP file and _data folder of the same name to that folder? That is safe, though if you do the copy while the project or Audacity is open, you may see harmless orphan files that were for the undo system or Audacity clipboard when the project was open.
If the project seems to open and play correctly, you do not need to worry about the orphans, just leave them and let Audacity work around them.
You can also save a backup by File > Save Project As and save to a new name. This is safe and should not produce orphan files. Note that the project with the old name closes, leaving the project with the new name.
If you are opening a backed up _data folder using the current AUP file, there may be errors because the AUP (current) and _data folder (old) may relate to different states of the project. Making a manual copy of the _data folder is the wrong way to back up. See http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/File_Management_Tips#Making_a_backup_copy_of_a_project .
If the computer crashes there is always a chance that files and folders will be corrupted. It is best to address the computer crashes as per the link above.
If the error says *orphan block files" you should not have lost any audio relevant to the current state of the project. If you have lost audio with that error, something related to Bug137 could have occurred.
If the error says “missing audio block files” then Audacity cannot find audio that it thinks it needs.
For projects that have the AUP file and _data folder but open with errors that affect the project, please quit Audacity then open the first bad project. Attach the AUP file for that project and the log (Help > Show Log…).
Quit Audacity and open the second bad project and attach the that project’s AUP file and log as above.
For projects that don’t have the _data folder, open the AUP file in Notepad or similar and look in the lines that start
<simpleblockfile filename=
then look for the file name of the AU file following <simpleblockfile filename=. Search your computer for some of those AU file names to see if you can find the folder they are in.
You can also try data recovery programs like Pandora (http://www.pandorarecovery.com/ ) but that is a last resort and even if your folder is found and intact, you need a second drive to recover it safely.