Work down the drain…

[Our Last Vision]

I spent from 8pm till 6am in the morning recording and editing a song, then I go to save and the whole program crashes and I lost everything… Has this ever happened to anyone else and is there some sort of recovery option to get my project back? I am running through windows pc. 

Edited February 28, 2022 by Our Last Vision
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[Base 57]

10 hours without saving + No autosave = recipe for disaster in any computer program. I don't work for 10 minutes without hitting Cntrl-S.

[sjoens]

Yes. Save regularly while working. Also, Save As a copy at days end because, tho very rare, it IS possible for a project to completely disappear when certain crashes happen.

[Our Last Vision]

4 minutes ago, Base 57 said:

10 hours without saving + No autosave = recipe for disaster in any computer program. I don't work for 10 minutes without hitting Cntrl-S.

Yeah I guess so, I just got so into what I was doing that I didn’t even think about it I suppose. Is there a way to set up an auto save? 

[scook]

http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=0x20A26

I set a time for auto-save but turn off auto-save by change setting it to 0.

I also use versioning 

In addition to manual save.

 

[Our Last Vision]

1 minute ago, scook said:

http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=0x20A26

I set a time for auto-save but turn off auto-save by change setting it to 0.

I also use versioning 

In addition to manual save.

 

Thank you much I appreciate it, I will definitely be using this. 

[tecknot]

Hi Our Last Vision and welcome to the Cakewalk forums.

When you created your project, did you give it a name by chance?  If so, you can look for it in the projects folder or the templates folder (if you were using a template).  I have crashed just using a template without naming a project and found a recovery file in the templates folder (C:\Cakewalk Content\Cakewalk Core\Project Templates).  It's worth a shot.

Kind regards,

tecknot

Edited March 1, 2022 by tecknot

[57Gregy]

And yes, it has happened to many of us. Especially when you're new and haven't gotten used to hitting Ctrl>S every so often. 
Welcome to the forum.
 

[Starship Krupa]

On 2/28/2022 at 10:23 AM, Our Last Vision said:

I spent from 8pm till 6am in the morning recording and editing a song, then I go to save and the whole program crashes and I lost everything… Has this ever happened to anyone else and is there some sort of recovery option to get my project back? I am running through windows pc. 

First, when you just open Cakewalk with a template, even the "blank" template, it names your project "Untitled Project" and if it does any automatic saving, it will be at the top level of your Cakewalk Projects folder. Look for it.

Second, if your project included recording audio and/or using samples (as opposed to being entirely done with soft synths), audio in a Cakewalk project is saved as soon as it is recorded. Again, by default, there will be a folder called Audio Data at the top level of your Cakewalk Projects folder. Any audio or samples you created or used should be in that folder.

Normally, these files and folders get moved to a subfolder below Cakewalk Projects, but you suffered a crash just before that could happen.

For anything else, well, I am sorry to hear of your misfortune, but as others have said, the purpose of these settings is to help allow us to disappear into the zone without experiencing tragedy when we look up 10 hours later and realize we haven't explicitly saved (it's happened to everyone who makes music with a DAW, so consider it a rite of passage; your 10 hours may not have yielded a song, but you may now speak with the experience of one marked in battle):

[Xoo]

23 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

it's happened to everyone who makes music with a DAW, so consider it a rite of passage; your 10 hours may not have yielded a song, but you may now speak with the experience of one marked in battle):

It's happened to anyone who's used a computer...bugs, hardware problems, power failing...

[bitflipper]

I've always heard that experience is the best teacher. I disagree. What kind of teacher gives you the lesson after the test?

My left hand has been programmed to do three things almost autonomously: play bass lines, CTL-S and CTL-Z.

To address the original question...sometimes, you can recover a project (or at least most of it) but only after certain types of crashes. If the program takes a handled error on close, Cakewalk will offer to try (no promises) to recover the project. This has actually worked for me on at least one occasion I can recall. But if the project has never been saved and the program aborts due to an unhandled error, then there's nothing to recover.

Personally, I do not use automatic saves because I want to choose the save points myself. Like right after nailing a difficult take. CTL-S. Sometimes I hit it twice because I don't remember doing it the first time, that's how automatic it is.