Recording Missing, Comp didn't even crash (2.2.2 Window 10, Lenovo Thinkpad T470s)

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I made a recording for a podcast that’s over an hour on Dec. 9th, and the file for the episode is called “Titanic.” Immediately after recording I hit save, closed up my computer. I’ve used the computer since then, with audacity and podcast stuff all minimized, but I haven’t actually looked at this since then.
Today, I opened the Titanic file to begin editing an the entire thing is blank. It’s as if I never recorded. I tried following the steps for a manual recovery (looking through %AppData% and so forth) but there’s nothing in my Session Data folders. (I’ve recorded and edited a few different episodes lately, so even if Titanic isn’t there, SOMETHING should be there…)

I’m scared to hit save and close again, so I’m just leaving this empty file named Titanic open on my computer and don’t know what to do. When I see what it was ‘last modified’ in File Explorer, it says Dec 9th, 1:50pm which was when I would have created and named the file – we started recording a bit after 2pm that day.

So where the hell did it go? And why don’t I have any recovery files, session data, or previous versions to restore? My computer has not crashed or updates since I recorded, I’ve only used it a few times and for nothing complicated.

SOS. This particular recording is crucial to the project and I am desperate to get it back.

2

Are you using Audacity 2.2.0 or 2.2.1 - and did you use Save As rather than the simple Save ?

If so that you have run into the nasty bug that we found in those versions - and if that is the case then I’m afraid that your project is not recoverable.


So the first thing to do is to install the latest version 2.3.0 as that this doesn’t happen again - you can get it from here: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/windows/

and keep an eye out for 2.3.1 which should be out next month.

WC

3

I don’t believe I used Save As, and I’m using 2.2.2. Could this be something else?

Thanks for the speedy response!

4

Very unlikely.

5

Do you know what causes or caused this bug to happen? So I can avoid this in the future. This has erased literally everything.

6

Could you have been using Audacity 2.2.1 when you created the project? It was a known problem that using “Save As…” (which was right next to the “Save” command) could cause the audio data to be lost. That would be (by far) the most likely cause, IF you use Audacity 2.2.1.

If you definitely were not using 2.2.1, then it becomes a lot more difficult to explain. Perhaps you had two projects open and saved the wrong one? Perhaps there was an error message that you didn’t notice when closing? I’m grasping for straws as this problem has not been reported for any version of Audacity since 2.2.1.