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Lost Files??

Postby rtrue » Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:39 am
I downloaded and have been using Audacity for the past two months. I am usually able to open my files and listen to them with no problems. Today I tried opening some recently recorded files of class lectures and I was unable too. A notification that came up said that my files have been lost and are unrecoverable. This really really really sucks because I have finals coming up. I really thought I could depend on the program and I hope that I still can. Any way to recover the file?

The warning box that comes up says:

Project check detected 1038 missing audio data blockfile[s] (.au), probably due to a bug, system crash or accidental deletion. There is no way for Audacity to recover this lost data automatically; you may choose to permanently fill in silence for the missing data, temporarily fill in silence for this file session only, or close the project now and try to restore the missing data by hand.



I know there is no way I deleted the files, no way I have a bug and no way it crashed. I saved my work after every recording.

Please help!

No, but they did miss one. Are you filling up your System Drive?

Click on your System Drive and Apple-I for an INFO panel. If it's not on your desktop, Go > Computer > the drive icon. Mine is called Francis Hard Drive. Francis is my PowerBook.

The drive on an audio (or video) production machine should never be over 90% full.

Sudden computer insanity can be caused by capturing multiple lectures and not realizing how much room they're taking up. Computers will go crazy when they fill up. Literally crazy -- insane behavior.

That and Audacity doesn't save sound files. It saves Projects which are made up of those thousands of AU files and lots more besides.

All valuable captures should be Exported to WAV or MP3 which will form a stand-alone sound file that you can listen to whenever you want and make safety backups (and put on your iPod if you want). Audacity Projects do not back up well and you can't move them.

Did you move any files to clean up your machine or maybe organize folders? That's the usual cause of Audacity losing AU files.

If none of that applies, I'll talk you through Disk Utilities. You may be losing the health of your System Drive.

Koz

I looked at the space I have left on my computer and it doesn't appear to be 90% full. Did you say that No, there is not a way to recover the files?

<<<Did you say that No, there is not a way to recover the files?>>>

I said we need to try and figure out where they went.

Are you sure you didn't rearrange folders or clean up your system in some way? It doesn't have to have anything directly to do with Audacity. I like to periodically take all my visible files and put them all in a dated folder to clean up my desktop. That would be deadly for Audacity if my show was on the desktop.

If you didn't, then the missing files are probably gone for good. Believe it or not, that's not important compared to what could be wrong. We need to do a quick test on the heath of your hard drive or the Mac and all the remaining lectures could be at risk.

Go > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utilities.

Select your hard drive and Verify Disk. Do not Repair Disk. See what it says.

Do you have a backup system for your Mac? External Storage, Internet Storage, .Mac account, Carbonite? Do you have a techie friend that can help you out with this? I'm not kidding. If you are having data damage on your Mac, you could turn it on one morning and it's not going to go "Chong."

Koz

This isn't a problem with the mac. This has happened to me and during an audacity Normalize process of a very large file (about 1 hour worth of audio). During the process Audacity ran out of disk space, and I received an alert and had to quit the program. Audacity lost all of the associated audio data files. All of the folders in the e00 directory are empty.

Right now I'm looking at data recovery software to see if I can find and restore those audio files. Then I can import the raw files back into audacity and start again. Though I'll probably bring them into Logic Studio instead now that I have it. Audacity is not as reliable as I'd like. But what do you want for free?

<<<Right now I'm looking at data recovery software to see if I can find and restore those audio files. >>>

Good luck with that. OS-X is a UNIX based operating system and is constantly managing its drives. It's not Windows. Like it says in the little delete panel, "You cannot undo this action."

Filling up the hard drive causes very serious damage with any program. The video people run into this all the time. This is not an Audacity problem.

Koz

Hay, I'm sorry to drop in out of nowhere, but I have a problem with my audacity and was hopin' someone here could help me out...
I was recording a very important interview for my research (for the scription of my master degree) and when I tried to pauze the recording and listen to a piece of it, the software jammed and shut down. When I re-opend Audacity I had the message there were files unsaved and that I could only restore them manually.
As I read in the upper page of this topic, this happend to some other people to... The thing is; it happend while I was recording and I didn't remove or changed files on my computer. So now I'm really freakin' out because that interview was so important and I can't find the 'files' that I need to restore manually. I haven't removed anything yet, since it happend. Can anyone help me to relocate the file and tell me how I can restore these manually? I work on a windows vista computer...

Gtrz.

Seb

The only actions possible after Record-Pause are Record or Stop. Other keys will produce an unstable condition. This may be different in Audacity 1.3. Try it. 1.3 has keystrokes that will allow you to Append to the end of an existing recording.

Record will continue the recording where it left off and Stop will conclude the recording and, if you wish, start a new, fresh track. You can easily recover from multiple tracks. Recovering from a crashed recording is rough.

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

<<<I work on a windows vista computer...>>>

Which is why you posted in the Mac forum. We don't always check.

Koz