Audacity Forum

I have used Audacity several times without problems, but I am now having the same problem-

error message "...is writable, or the disk is full." which is followed by "Failed to copy the file '...' to '...' (error 2: the system cannot find the file specified.)"

I have ~30GB of free space on the NTFS drive and so it doesn't seem to be a problem of disk space.

I use the Audacity 1.2.6 version.

The copy and paste work-around seems to do the job, but it is not the ideal situation.

At first, I thought it was an OS issue (I have XP SP3 running on an IBM labtop). But searching the web (Google "green check box read-only") and using those solutions did not help (other people have the same problem with other applications, it seems).

In any event, identifying the source of the problem and solving it would be much appreciated (even if it is an OS issue).

EigenFunctions wrote:I use the Audacity 1.2.6 version.
...
In any event, identifying the source of the problem and solving it would be much appreciated (even if it is an OS issue).

Any issues with Audacity 1.2.x will not get fixed. All work on the 1.2 version ended a long time ago. The new "stable" version of Audacity will be 2.0 and is due for release very soon.

You can get the same error message in 1.3.8 - I got it earlier today. It semed to happebn when I had a project in a folder and then wanted to store a copy of it in a different folder with Save Project As. I will need to do some more testing to see if this is replicable - and if it is I will report it as a bug.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:You can get the same error message in 1.3.8 - I got it earlier today. It semed to happebn when I had a project in a folder and then wanted to store a copy of it in a different folder with Save Project As. I will need to do some more testing to see if this is replicable - and if it is I will report it as a bug.

WC

The problem for me is saving in the same folder, not a new folder.

Audacity is a great application and I hope the solution to this problem is resolved.

EigenFunctions wrote: The problem for me is saving in the same folder, not a new folder.

For issues with Audacity 1.2, please post in the Audacity 1.2.x part of the forum. There are major differences between Audacity 1.2 and 1.3, so even if the symptoms of a problem look similar, the cause and solution may be very different.

Alternatively, try updating to Audacity 1.3.8 and see if the problem still exists. Many Audacity 1.2 issues are resolved by updating to a more recent version.

stevethefiddle wrote:

EigenFunctions wrote: The problem for me is saving in the same folder, not a new folder.

For issues with Audacity 1.2, please post in the Audacity 1.2.x part of the forum. There are major differences between Audacity 1.2 and 1.3, so even if the symptoms of a problem look similar, the cause and solution may be very different.

Alternatively, try updating to Audacity 1.3.8 and see if the problem still exists. Many Audacity 1.2 issues are resolved by updating to a more recent version.

The issue is Version 1.2.6 is listed as the newest stable version - do I really want to use a beta or unstable release - wouldn't that introduce even more issues?

EigenFunctions wrote:Version 1.2.6 is listed as the newest stable version

Yes, we are all aware of that, and many of us on the forum think that it is misleading.

Audacity 1.2.6 was the last of the 1.2.x series.
Way back in time, the Audacity developers began work on a new experimental version of Audacity - this was released in 2005 as Audacity 1.3.0
Since then, only essential bug fixes were done on Audacity 1.2.x while all the new and exciting stuff was being done on the 1.3 version.
The last update to the 1.2 version was back in 2006. (that's about 4 centuries ago in "computer years")

About a year later (Nov 2007) Audacity 1.3.4 was released - IMHO this was the first "stable" release of the 1.3 series (I've still got a copy of it installed on my old Windows computer). However, the "beta" tag was never removed from the 1.3 series as each new version was released with new features which had yet to be tested in the field. Apart from a few brief hiccups, the 1.3 version has been essentially stable since version 1.3.4.

Audacity 1.3.8 was released a couple of months ago and this was the last version of the 1.3 series to have new features included. From 1.3.8 it's all about stability and polish - there are no new feature for Audacity until the new "stable" release (Audacity 2.0).

The latest release is now Audacity 1.3.9 - this version is called a "Release Candidate" (RC). What that means is that the developers think that Audacity 1.3 has now essentially "arrived". There will no doubt be the odd few tweaks that still need to be done, but the current 1.3.9 version is pretty much what you will get in the next "stable" release.

The last major bug in Audacity 1.3 was to do with VST support. This was one of the last new features to be added (along with the "Mixer Board") and was introduced in Audacity 1.3.8. Not surprisingly this brought with it some problems, but fortunately only for a small minority of users. The problems here were caused by conflicts between Audacity and some 3rd part VST plug-ins that some users already had installed on their machines. These issues have now hopefully been fixed, but we are on the lookout in case any other issues come to light.

EigenFunctions wrote:do I really want to use a beta or unstable release

Yes

There are a lot more known issues now with the 1.2.6 version than with the latest beta version (simply because hardware and operating systems have moved on over the last 5 years), but no-one is going to fix the 1.2 version because it will be completely obsolete as soon as the long awaited Audacity 2.0 is released.

One area that is still a bit flaky in 1.3 is "FFMPEG". This is a 3rd party add on that provides support for additional file types. This is mostly an issue for Linux users, though it's not yet perfect on other platforms either. To some degree this is out of the hands of the Audacity developers because ffmpeg is made by someone else, but Audacity will still work even if ffmpeg doesn't - without ffmpeg there are some audio file types (such as WMA and AAC) that are not supported, but you're still OK with other file types.

If you use Windows Vista, have a look at this page before you upgrade and hopefully the upgrade will then be problem free http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... s_Vista_OS
If you get stuck, we're here to help.

Thanks very much for the explanation, I agree, I will install version 1.3.9 soon. I don't use Vista (in fact, I just bought a new laptop and it comes with XP). For now, I don't use many of the Audacity options, just record from a voice tape and create MP3's (I use the Lame plug-in) for a website.

Thanks so much for your support, I appreciate it.

Thanks Steve for the long explanation about Stable and Beta. I must for the record clarify about your comment that

1.3.9 ... is called a "Release Candidate" (RC). What that means is that the developers think that Audacity 1.3 has now essentially "arrived". There will no doubt be the odd few tweaks that still need to be done, but the current 1.3.9 version is pretty much what you will get in the next "stable" release.

The second part is correct in terms of us being at polishing and bug-fixing. However 1.3.9 is not a "release candidate". I just offered a "1.3.9 release candidate 1" here in another post because it was the latest code we had - which we would probably release as "1.3.9 (Unicode)".

We recently discussed the merits of calling the last few Betas "release candidates" (2.0 release candidates, because a release candidate has to be a candidate for what it will be released as) and we decided that the terminology would probably confuse many users. Release Candidates will remain internal releases and will never be published on our main site, although they may be suggested to an individual user to try against a specific bug if they happen to be the very latest code at the time. We are (at least in the run up to 2.0) officially distributing "alphas" ("Nightly" or very frequent builds made between Beta releases) so as to get more feedback on our latest code. The current run of Nightly Builds are therefore designated 1.3.10-alpha_(date).

As to the error problem, we can only appeal for steps that let us reproduce this, especially the project file/data_folder or autosave file/temp folder at the time the error occurs. Without this the chances of fixing it are much reduced.


Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:I must for the record clarify about your comment that ... " 1.3.9 ... is called a "Release Candidate" (RC)." ... 1.3.9 is not a "release candidate"....
The current run of Nightly Builds are therefore designated 1.3.10-alpha_(date).

Thanks for the clear explanation Gale.

Gale Andrews wrote: As to the error problem,...

The problem was with Audacity 1.2 - incorrectly posted in the 1.3 forum because EigenFunctions thought it may be the same issue as the earlier posts in this thread, which is rather doubtful. If EigenFunctions is happy to upgrade, then I think that doing so is probably the best course of action and we can take it from there if the upgrade does not make the problem miraculously disappear (as so often is the case).