Audacity Forum

I am using a MacBook Pro Intel, plenty of memory. I was in the middle of a big editing project, many hours of edits, etc. Had mechanical problems with the computer but have saved the HD and connect externally. As a panic-safety measure, I copied all the editing files, recording data, etc onto two other HDs, and now, of course, the files cannot find the originals to complete the editing.

I believe that they are all there, scattered, etc. Is there a simple way to consolidate everything back together, so the original edits will be able to find the related files?

Help, willing to pay a consultant!

Best thanks,

J. Read

As you have probably found out, an Audacity project consists of the .aup file that ties everything together, and a whole bunch of .au files that actually hold the audio data. These audio files live in a _data folder. E.g. you would have "MyProject.aup" and "MyProject_data".

So, does the "MyProject_data" folder exist intact on one of the external HDs? If so, all you need to do is put the "MyProject.aup" file in the same folder as the "MyProject_data" folder and Audacity should be able to continue working. Do this on your (now working?) internal hard drive, as Audacity may have problems working from an external USB drive.

Are you using Audacity 1.2.5? If so, and you no longer have the "MyProject_data" folder, you can just create it and put all the .au files in there. Just make sure that the name of the folder (before the _data part) is exactly the same as the name of the .aup file.

If you are using Audacity 1.3.x, that version creates sub-folders inside the _data folder to hold the .au files, which may complicate the reconstruction process.

-- Bill