Audacity Forum

I deleted my orphaned files (the safe and recommended choice) and now have no sound at all on my project. I did it while creating my back up copy (so I don't have one). I'm using Audacity 1.3.12 on a MacBook with Snow Leopard OS. Please tell me I can get this project back? Please?

jimbosmit wrote:I deleted my orphaned files (the safe and recommended choice) and now have no sound at all on my project. I did it while creating my back up copy (so I don't have one). I'm using Audacity 1.3.12 on a MacBook with Snow Leopard OS. Please tell me I can get this project back? Please?

Sorry for the problem. But first, make sure this is not due to some other problem such as imported WAV or AIFF files that Audacity is reading from the source location but which are no longer available. You can click File > Check Dependencies to see the name and location of any dependent files. If you restore the files to the name/location stated, your project will have audio again.

Otherwise, this could be an instance of a rare bug which may result in projects reporting files as orphans which are required for the project. The "Orphan Blockfile(s)" dialogue in the next 1.3.14 Beta will not contain any recommendation to delete orphans.

If the project is still open, you can look at Help > Show Log which should list the .au files that were reported to be orphans. If you have a lot of disk space it is possible the deleted files will still be on your hard drive in space waiting to be re-used. if you can find a program that locates files that have been deleted from the file system you may be able to recover the files if the vacant space has not already been overwritten. I don't know any free programs for Mac that do this, but all such programs will have a trial that at least lets you scan to see if the files still exist.

Note that in some variants of this bug, it is possible that if you have multiple projects open at the same time, .au files from one project can be saved to the wrong project. This means that a project may have "missing blockfiles" which will actually be in another project and appear there as "orphan files". In that case you should not delete the orphans but move them back to the project which has missing files.

Let us know how you get on.


Gale

Don't put a lot of hope in UnDelete programs. MacOS-X is a Unix-based system and steps on "vacant" file space almost immediately.

We had two serious Delete By Accident problems in the shop and in both cases the best efforts of the techies and Mac Service guy and all the kings horses, etc, couldn't bring back any more than shards and fragments. When they say "you cannot undo this action" they mean it.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:MacOS-X is a Unix-based system and steps on "vacant" file space almost immediately.

Interesting. This is not of course the line the program manufacturers spin you such as http://mackeeper.zeobit.com/mac-undelete .

Recovery of deleted file is generally quite successful on Windows if your disk was not too full and you have a separate drive you can recover the files to.


Gale