Recovering files

[totalrod2]

Last night I lost 6 hours worth of recording when I forgot to save everything. Tonight I spent another 5 hours re-doing all those tracks I lost. Now Audacity has crashed and I can't recover tonight's work either!!! I'm ripping my hair hair out now. I do have a folder which apparently contains all the individual .au files, but I don't have a "aup" file. Is there a way of recovering ANYTHING? I can't go through this again. What can I do with all those "au" files? Please help?
Bryan

[kozikowski]

There is a crash recovery process...

Crash Recovery
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... shRecovery

Then you can stop using Audacity 1.2. The latest 1.3 Audacity is much less likely to crash and cause problems.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both versions, but only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 projects will not open in 1.2.

Koz

[totalrod2]

Thanks Koz. That was actually the first thing I tried. There's about 560 individual files, all in their original unedited states and in 5-6 second increments...not to mention being in complete random order. It would take longer to piece this puzzle together, than it would to just start over again. I've resigned myself to it. This time, I'll be hitting SAVE every five minutes. There's no way in hell I'm gonna do this a forth time. Thanks again for trying to help.
Bryan

[steve]

This time, I'll be hitting SAVE every five minutes.

It can also be worth hitting "Save As" every now and then and saving the project with a new file name (for example, myoroject001.aup, myoroject002.aup, myoroject003.aup ...) That way, if there is a really bad crash and the project becomes corrupt, there is an earlier version not too far away. This uses a LOT of disk space, but the projects can be deleted when you finish.

Something that should be backed up asap is recordings - Exporting the raw recording as a WAV file immediately after pressing the stop button can save a lot of tears.

[kubrickfan10]

I need HELP! O.k., here's the problem! I recorded this audio clip on a program called Windows Movie Maker that came out with a .wav extension. Now a year later, I did something extremely stupid and everytime I play it, a message appear that says it is corrupt or not in the correct format. I don't know if I'm stating the problem the right way, but if I am, here's my two questions: can Audacity help to "un-corrupt" it and if not, what can? Please, please, please help!!!

[steve]

I did something extremely stupid

What was the stupid thing that you did?

everytime I play it, a message appear that says it is corrupt or not in the correct format.

every time you play it with what program?

How big is this WAV file?

[kubrickfan10]

It's hard to admit it because it was the most asinine, thoughtless, idiotic thing I've ever done in my life! I was listening to the .wav file on MusicMatch Jukebox and somehow, an impetus in my mind drove me to copy a picture and paste it on the clipboard as it was playing. I didn't know the result was that it would corrupt the file and I will confess to being a dolt for it.

As for when I said:

everytime I play it, a message appear that says it is corrupt or not in the correct format

I deeply apologize for that mistake. I meant to say that when I right-click the file and log on "Properties" then "Details" it said "This file is invalid or corrupted". Then, as I click on "Preview", the message then immediately appeared saying that it is corrupt or not in the correct format. As for what program I played it on, everywhere I played it on (MusicMatch, Windows Media Player, etc.), it doesn't work.

[steve]

I was listening to the .wav file on MusicMatch Jukebox and somehow, an impetus in my mind drove me to copy a picture and paste it on the clipboard as it was playing. I didn't know the result was that it would corrupt the file and I will confess to being a dolt for it

It seems rather surprising that copying an image should corrupt a WAV file that is being played. Perhaps there is a rather serious bug in MusicMatch Jukebox, or perhaps it was coincidence and the file became corrupt for some other reason.

If you know exactly what format the WAV file was originally, then you may be able to import it into Audacity 1.3.12 using "File menu > Import > Raw Data".
You will then need to supply information about the file format. If you do not enter the correct format information, or if the file was not in WAV format, then you will just get rubbish (noise). If you supply the correct format information, then you may be able to salvage some or all of the audio (depending on how much corruption has occurred).

[kubrickfan10]

Forgive me if I sound dumb asking this but what do you mean by "format"? Could you give me some example of a format, that way I would know what I'm doing and not mess up.

[kozikowski]

<<<copy a picture and paste it on the clipboard as it was playing.>>>

I wonder if the system didn't try to make this performance into a movie file. Can you tell what kind of icon is associated with the file? Instead of forcing it to play in Audacity, what happens if you just double click it? Or have you been here already?

Koz