Audacity project is froze and hung up, any way I can recover it without shutting down?

I’ll keep it brief. Ever since 8:00 PM yesterday, my project file for a song I was working on in Audacity froze up after I tried to speed it up. And ever since then, it’s continued to say “Not responding”. I’ve left it like that in hopes it would get back on track soon enough, but it didn’t, it’s still like that as of the time of posting.

Normally I would just shut down the program, but I need to recover the project. I know the autosave features restores the last project worked on, but the problem is, the last thing I did before the program froze was merge the vocals and beat into one track, and I need to have them separate in case I need to fix any audio problems. If I deleted the file right now, I would lose any past revisions where the vocals were on a separate track and I’d be unable to access them ever again. (Yeah I know, “save your work” but they wouldn’t let me save it because of limited disk space).

Is there any way I can just, force the program to actually respond, even if just for 30 seconds, so I can undo a few revisions and get separate vocals and beat again? Or even just force a second Audacity process to open up?

If the computer is very low on disk space, that may be what caused the problem. If that’s the case, then there’s a slim chance that freeing up sufficient space on the relevant drive may allow Audacity to continue. I don’t hold out a lot of hope, but possibly worth trying.

I just deleted about 1.19 GB from my computer. I don’t think that did anything.

I don’t think that did anything.

That may help you on your next project. Not this one.

Audacity doesn’t have UNDO like you think. Most important, Audacity Projects do not save UNDO. So even if you do have a healthy Project to open, you can’t back up to an earlier edit. UNDO only works when Audacity is alive and working the current show.

Audacity works internally at a very high quality (32-floating) to help effects and filter quality. So however large you think your song is, it’s probably larger.

Audacity forms UNDO for many actions by saving a copy of the whole show. So if your song has many tracks, filters, effects, and edits, it probably exists as many, many copies. Each one takes up space until you close Audacity.

All that and not counting other Windows things you have running at the same time. All have to fit.

For the next song, I would probably do a clean Windows shutdown. Shift+Shutdown > OK > Wait > Start. Do not let anything automatically start. Then start the edit.

You should have good quality WAV copies of all your show parts, so if the edit goes into the bin—again, you can start over.

Internal memory has to fit, too. Not just the hard drive. You may have discovered the machine limit for that kind of show and edit.

Koz

You didn’t say which Audacity you have, but if it’s the current 3.1.3, Audacity will File > Save Project > Backup Project which will make a backup without links to the current edit. So if anything nasty happens to the edit, it doesn’t affect the backup.

Koz

they wouldn’t let me save it because of limited disk space

Who is “they.”

Are you working on a cloud or network drive? Audacity doesn’t like that very much. Those drives can cause unstable operation and crashing. It’s not that they cause data damage directly. It’s that they have terrible access problems. Audacity may throw a file off to Google Drive and it may or may not get there for a while. You can’t predict it and there’s no way to tell Audacity what’s happening.

Normally I would just shut down the program

So it crashes all the time and you’re afraid this time it’s not going to come back? I don’t mean to pile on you, but what you’re doing isn’t broken. It’s perfectly normal Audacity operation.

Koz

Audacity lol.

Are you working on a cloud or network drive? Audacity doesn’t like that very much. Those drives can cause unstable operation and crashing. It’s not that they cause data damage directly. It’s that they have terrible access problems. Audacity may throw a file off to Google Drive and it may or may not get there for a while. You can’t predict it and there’s no way to tell Audacity what’s happening.

I think it’s a network. (My computer tells me it’s a local disk, assume that’s the same thing).

I know they’ll (Audacity) bring back a snapshot of the last revision of the project. I’m just afraid of losing a past revision. But from what you said in your other posts, it looks like I’m gonna be losing that anyways because Audacity dosen’t save undo history and it dosen’t look like the program is gonna unfreeze anytime soon. But thanks for replying and stuff.

it looks like I’m gonna be losing that anyways because Audacity dosen’t save undo history

UNDO History as a Project. If you have a crash, there is no formal Project yet and depending on what got stuck in memory when the show went down, it’s possible UNDO may come back.

A crash is super unstable and there’s no good way to tell what survived and what didn’t. If Audacity didn’t come back by now, the next step is force it to close and see if Disaster Recovery has enough to work with.

Koz