Error saving project , is not writeable, or the disk is full

[ITGuy]

Hi All,

[Tech: WinXP, Audacity 1.2.6]

I've just installed this to a few PCs on our lab at work but when I'm testing it i'm getting the following errors when trying to save to a network drive (My Documents)

Error Saving Project
Could not save project. Perhaps domainnamereplicationuserslabuserslab1Audacity123 is not writable, or the disk is full
[OK]

Then I get immediately after

Audacity Error
(X) Failed to copy the file 'domainnamereplicationuserslabuserslab1Audacity123_datab00000.au' to 'domainnamereplicationuserslabuserslab1Audacity123_datab00000.au' (error 2: the system cannot find the file specified.)
[OK]

If I click on [Details >>] I'm getting the same filenames but with (error 5: access is denied.)

Being on a network I've looked at permissions and the user of lab1 has Full Control on the file location above, is a power user on the pc in question. Of course, logging in as an administrator it all works & saves fine.
I've also created a group policy to allow all users Full Control to c:documents and settings*.* (and subdirs) in case it was to do with that but no change. Did a search on here and found an OS X issue a bit like this and changed the file locations to My Documents, restarted program as told but still getting the above.

So why can't these files be accessed properly? Its a permissions thing I reakon but its about WHERE and how much access to grant.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Lovely long 1st post I know but dont want to miss anything out .

All the best,

Lewis aka "The IT Guy" (I even have a name badge dammit!! )

Update1: Added lab1 user to Administrators on the PC but still the same error.
Update2: Incase theres an issue with DFS i set the prefs to use servernameusers$labuserslab1 instead but no joy
Update3: Have removed *.au from the Screening rules (File Server Resources), am now able to Generate > white noise without an error still getting not writeable / disk full
Update4: Turned it on and off again - ALL WORKING NOW!

Hope this helps others, all the best, enjoy the week!

[kozikowski]

We warn people against capturing or managing to a network drive. Networks are particularly unsuited for live capture because of Ethernet Negotiations and Collisions. Capture, whether audio or video happens in real time and network drives don't.

Another problem is the file management thing you ran into. If your network "knows" what filenames are, Audacity and the network will drive each other crazy.

And last, You Can't Move Projects. The AUP file in each Audacity Project records the filenames of everything in the Project and the folder and directory locations. I predict sadness for anybody who tries to retrieve a project through a thicket of mounted directories and aliases.

Audacity is a very simple program and it likes running on very simple computers.

Koz

[jan.kolar]

There is a friend problem (though with 1.3.x on Unix) : http://www.audacityteam.org/forum/viewt ... =18&t=2724
Reboot suggestion can be useful there, too.

[valvita]

hi, i know the original post on this topic is old and it was a PC + also network user. but i am on a new mac single computer, and am getting the same error messages when trying to save.

i've been trying to open-and-re-save a couple of old projects, because i need to work with them again. i recently had to replace my computer, and i downloaded the latest version of audacity [1.3.9.unicode] on my new computer. i had saved these old projects + the data folders to my external hard drive. the projects open and play no problem from there, with the newer audacity. but, when i tried to "save-as" one of the projects in question, i got the error message listed above, ie "Error saving project , is not writeable, or the disk is full". then i did a test on a new project in several different ways, trying to save to several different places including desktop, and still got the same result. so basically my newly downloaded audacity does not save no matter what i'm trying to save.

can anyone help?

[jah]

Pretty much same as valvita - been successfully using 1.3.9; worked fine 20 oct 09. Rebooted mac and now cannot save - disk is not full and everything else is the same. Afraid to quit program and lose project. Actually directories are created, just no data written.


ok, created new project, 1 sec silence, saved, then copied and pasted from unsavable project - this time save work. tried to open another project and Audacity crashed. On restart it recovered original project and I could save. Will try another project now; at lest there are workarounds if this happens again.

[kozikowski]

Do you actually Need Projects? Would Exporting A WAV file work just as well?

Projects are for people creating multi-channel shows with hundreds of sound clips and effects and a cast of thousands. Is that you? I do capture, edit, cleaning, conversion and management in Audacity every week -- sometimes several times a week -- and I haven't Saved a Project in the line of duty yet.

Projects are brittle and easily damaged. They're fine if you need them, but they can be a serious liability if you don't.

Koz

[jah]

I suppose I don't need projects. All I want to do is record, save file, later edit (mostly clip, adjust sound), and separate into several different sound files. I just assumed saving projects was the default way to start off. If it is better to export as wav and work with that later, then I will.
thanks
jah

[kozikowski]

<<<I just assumed saving projects was the default way to start off.>>>

It is the default. And it drives us nuts. There are several Audacity defaults that naturally assume you've been working in sound for 25 years and you're recutting your 16 track symphony in the highest possible quality. Most people aren't and the defaults get in the way. That's a polite way of saying they've destroyed many shows. My favorite philosophic disconnect is that Audacity will not Save a sound file. Intentionally.

/Rant

<<<i recently had to replace my computer>>>

Usually the kiss of death. Audacity Projects can be vast collections of files and if you don't get everything back exactly the way it was in exactly the same folders and spelled the same way, you have no show.

<<<"Error saving project , is not writeable, or the disk is full".>>>

You can get that error if you put a date in the filename. Don't. Upper and lower case letters, numbers, dash, and underscore and the only safe characters inside filenames. I have to push files all over the company, so I don't use spaces, either.

ScoobyVoiceCapture20091022.wav

Koz

[steve]

One of the good things about a WAV files is that it is just a single file. Unless you delete or overwrite it there's not much can go wrong with a WAV. Saving Projects is particularly useful when working with multi-track projects,but you need to be a bit more cautious with them. In particular, the .AUP file and the project_data folder must be kept together and file names must contain only legal characters - to be safe, stick to a-z 0-9 hyphen ( - ) and underscore ( _ ). There is also potential for problems caused by the use of non-standard characters in a files id3 tags, and there's the old "duplicate attribute" problem that crops up from time to time in Audacity 1.2.x.

Most of the problems with saving projects have been sorted out in Audacity 1.3.9, though you still need to remember to keep the AUP file and data folder together and be a bit careful with what characters you use in the file name. On Windows, using the "/" character will produce an error as Windows interprets it as part of a path name (always best for compatibility to get in the habit of using only "a-z, A-Z, 0-9, space, hyphen, underscore" in file names. File names in Linux are case sensitive).

There was a remaining bug in Audacity 1.3.9 that caused the "disk full/not writable" problem when saving a project if the project contained any completely silent tracks. This has been fixed in Audacity 1.3.10 (available as a "nightly build" http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... tly_Builds ).

We still recommend that with important recordings, the first thing to do after making a recording is to Export a backup of the track in WAV format - preferably 2 copies on different drives to give protection against hardware failure.

As Audacity projects may contain references to external files (they may contain data that is in files that are outside of the project), Audacity 1.3 has a useful option in the File menu to "Check Dependencies" so that you can now be sure that the project is entirely self contained.

There is useful information about Projects and managing files here: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ement_Tips

[valvita]

thanks everybody for your responses. i do need to save as a project because i'm using lots of tracks, and for what i'm doing, i need to save the project as such, and be able to rework later, on an ongoing basis. i've always been able to do this before, with several previous version of audacity, so i don't know why a newer version would be giving me problems with this simple task of saving a project.

so, given that, can anyone help further?