Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

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Audacity 1.2.x is now obsolete. Please use the current Audacity 2.1.x version.

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ksork
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Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

Post by ksork » Fri Nov 05, 2010 2:34 am

I tried searching the forum for some time, but couldn't find anyone else who experienced this exact same issue.

I use Audacity to record hour-long lectures twice a week. Sometimes, immediately after I finish the recording, I save the project to my desktop. Other times, after making the recording, I put my MacBook to sleep (with the Audacity project being unsaved) and wait until I get back to my room and connect to my external hard drive before saving the project. This has worked just fine... until recently.

After having made a recording and then putting my MacBook to sleep without saving the Audacity project, I later woke my MacBook up again and tried playing the file. When I hit play, there was no sound and all of the "vertical lines" of the recording disappeared and turned into one flat line. I then got this error message:
can't open file '/tmp/audacity1.2-kyle/project1342051912/e00/d01/e000133c.au' (error 2: No such file or directory)
Now, having read a bunch of topics here on the forum, I learned that I could navigate to that directory and find the temporary files. I found that while the folders exist such as "d00," "d01," "d02," and so on, they are all empty.

Is there any way for me to get these recordings back? If not, why did the temporary recording files disappear?

I thought that my issue was somewhat unique because I never experienced an Audacity crash. This was just a result of putting my laptop to sleep without having saved the project, then waking it up again later.

As an extra note, because I didn't have time to look into this issue when it first happened, I made later recordings, which I saved to my desktop, all the while keeping this "messed up" Audacity file open [and still unsaved] in the background. Did making new recordings before working with this "messed up" project cause the "messed up" project's temporary recording files to disappear or be overwritten somehow?

Thanks for putting up with my newbie terminology. I GREATLY appreciate any help I can get.

steve
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Re: Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

Post by steve » Fri Nov 05, 2010 2:51 am

As you have probably discovered, Audacity projects are made up of a ".AUP" file, and thousands of little data files. This is much more complex than a simple, single WAV or AIFF file and much more prone to error. For important recordings (with any software, including Audacity) we strongly advise exporting a back-up copy of the recording in WAV format as soon as possible after recording.

There have been great advances in making Audacity more reliable, and the latest Audacity 1.3.12 is probably the most reliable version yet. I would highly recommend upgrading.
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bgravato
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Re: Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

Post by bgravato » Fri Nov 05, 2010 3:37 am

The system periodically cleans up the folder /tmp (the files there are supposed to be temporary so the system regularly cleans them up so no "lost dead remains" stay there taking space... Maybe it was a long period of time between recording and when you tried to save your project and the files got deleted by the system...

Like Koz said... it's always a good policy to always save your work when recording is done. Exporting as WAV or FLAC is recommended.

kozikowski
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Re: Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

Post by kozikowski » Fri Nov 05, 2010 3:55 am

I'm horrified that you're putting your computer to sleep without saving the work. I'm going to have to lie down for a minute with a cool towel on my head.

"Sleep," even on a Mac is not reliable. On my perfect in every way MacBook Pro, I have had very rare instances where the machine simply does not wake up and has to be halted with the power button. Anything running when I do that is lost.

I'm with Bruno. If you leave the machine sleeping long enough, it will wake up wanting to clean house and the temporary files can be damaged or eliminated. Audacity is a very simple program and likes running in really simple computers. We're perfectly happy that the development team cranked out a Mac version of Audacity that runs on normal machines.

And that version isn't Audacity 1.2. That may have worked on older machines, but we consider Audacity 1.3.12 the current, working version in spite of the label on the download site. I have an advanced Mac that won't run Audacity 1.2 at all and other users have had stability issues.

Koz

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Re: Recover unsaved recordings (no crash involved)

Post by kozikowski » Fri Nov 05, 2010 3:58 am

Missed a step...

http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_mac

Be sure and get your MP3 lame software and FFMpeg from the same place. Don't use any older ones.

Koz

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