I’m using Linux Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
Audacity 3.0.2
Installed from… don’t remember
So, I recorded an interview over Audacity. Saved the file as a project, then began editing and while it was saving I got a few error messages about disk space, freed up disk space and then for all intents and purposes the project was saved (as in 100% completed) and then after a moment or two Audacity closed without any prompts.
I now get a “Audacity failed to read from a file in …” …It is a local file and I have it saved but it is 4.7gb
Please help! How can I recover the file, or at the very least the audio (there was only a single audio track saved on it).
I’m not optimistic about recovery, but we can try.
Is Ubuntu installed in one partition along with your home folder (it is by default, but that can be customised).
I’m guessing that you changed the actual path to “…”, or did it it literally say “…”?
If it was an actual path, did it begin with:
/home//
How much free space is there now in your home folder?
As far as I can see there is only the AUP3 file. I searched for AUP3-WAL but couldn’t find anything.
The project is about 1 hour and 50 minutes. It is on a single track.
I have backed up the file to an external hard drive and made a zip of it on that drive just in case. Shall I send you a zipped version of the file? Via dropbox or something like that?
4.7 GB looks rather large.
Mono or stereo?
Did you use the default 44100 Hz sample rate?
Does the name or path to the project file contain an apostrophe (single quote character)?
On a scale of 0 to 5, where 0=technophobe and 5=uber-geek, how would you describe your level of computer skills?
At least I recorded the interview separately, but I take it you have to have ample space on a computer for this not to happen (i.e. that the disk doesn’t get full). So far, It seems like it’s somewhere in the 10gb+ range.
I imagine I should always save it as an audio file before saving it as a project if its only a single track, right?
Yes, definitely. When recording, it is good to export as a WAV (or FLAC) file straight away as the first thing after pressing the Stop button. The same applies to any recording app - get a backup of the original recording asap. It may be bad to lose a load of editing, but it’s worse to lose the original recording.
It’s looking more unlikely that we will be able to recover anything, though I’d like to gain some insight into what went wrong.
My guess is that you ran out of disk space at a critical time when there was a lot of data in the WAL file - that’s a kind of temp file. Normally any data in the WAL file that is a part of the project is transferred in one go when the project is closed, consolidating the entire project into the one AUP3 file. Due to lack of disk space, that transfer failed, causing all modified data since the previous save (possibly “all” of the audio data) was lost.
We may be able to learn something from looking at the “sampleblocks” table in the “Browse Data” tab.
Below shows that for a small perfectly formed project. What does it look like for your project?
(Note, you may need to resize some of the columns to see what’s in them).
Same as last time, but instead of selecting “Table: sampleblocks”, select “Table: autosave” (one screeshot), and again for “Table: project” (another screenshot).
There is clearly a lot of audio data still there, but the question is whether we can access it other than as random 6 second chunks.