Do temporary files get overwritten if they weren't saved?

[pavlovsdaughter]

I recently used the Audacity Recover Utility to recover a project after Audacity crashed unexpectedly; everything worked fine, and the entire thing was there.

For the time being, I left the files in the temporary folder because I thought they'd be preserved.

However Audacity crashed again the next day, and the temporary files were replaced with the project that had crashed.

Are the first temporary files gone forever? Is there another location I could check?

Unfortunately I think I already know the answer to this, but I was just hoping there may be a chance that my initial project wasn't gone forever.

[kozikowski]

Audacity makes terrible archives. Any time you have valuable work, Export As WAV immediately and make a safety copy of the file(s) on a thumb drive, external hard drive, or backup system.

The only time this doesn't work is if you have a multi-track Project. Then, you're stuck with Save Project. As you progress down your show, Save Project As multiple different file names.

Each new Project clears out the temporary files, so yes, that's the end.

Koz