PC crash deletes folder with CbB projects

[RummieGit]

While working on my audio PC (Win10), I suddenly couldn't stop the Cakewalk by B. program. The program froze and I had no choice but to shut down the PC. After restarting, the system ran very slowly and control with the PC mouse was also extremely sluggish. After opening the program (CbB), I noticed that the folder containing all my projects had been lost due to the system crash.

I'm not giving up hope yet.

Is there any idea in the forum on how I might be able to recover the lost CbB projects? Is there any good, free or inexpensive software for this?

At the moment, controlling the entire PC with the mouse is still very slow. Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this problem?

 

[hockeyjx]

5 hours ago, RummieGit said:

Is there any good, free or inexpensive software for this?

I've used Disk Drill a few years back for a client, and did recover some data. Don't remember the cost.

[Amberwolf]

Keep in mind that every moment you use the computer, the OS and programs are potentially writing files to the disk.  Since it doesn't think the space where your stuff is is being used, it is allowed to overwrite that space.   

So in a data loss situation, the first thing to do is not to use the drive your stuff might still be on.  Get a recovery program you can run from a USB stick, or get the drive to a different computer where it is not a drive the system would write to, and run the recovery from there. 

If you don't have a separate computer you can do these things with, see if any of your friends are willing to let you use theirs, or take it to a data recovery specialist (will likely not be cheap). 

 

The most likely issue is the drive itself has a problem, and the system slowness is from it having to repeatedly try to read areas that are failing or damaged.  

Plenty of other things could be wrong instead, but that's really common. 

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

Get a recovery program you can run from a USB stick

Such as: https://medicatusb.com/

Or: https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

Best practice would be to download and create the bootable USB stick on another computer, then bring the stick to your computer and boot from it. Once you boot from the recovery drive, you'll be presented with many utilities. Try the drive/data recovery tools first. With luck, they'll be able to recover the lost directory. If they do, copy it off of there ASAP.

As Amberwolf says, until you either get your data back or determine that you can't get it back, you shouldn't boot the computer from its current drive and use it. Turn it off until you can boot from the recovery drive.

Once you get your data back, then you can start addressing what might have caused the problem. From what you describe, some piece of hardware went bad, probably your hard drive, maybe memory. You'll likely wind up replacing whatever it was. There are good utilities on the Medi-Cat and Hirens disks that you can use to run tests on your system.

[RummieGit]

..thanks to  @hockeyjx  @Amberwolf and  @Starship Krupa

I have now searched my PC's hard drives for .cwp files using the general Windows search function and, to my pleasant surprise, the projects gradually reappeared, listed in a table with a new path. The project files were apparently not deleted by the crash, but only moved. And here's something interesting: the projects appear in a sub-subfolder of Steinberg and PreSonus software. Does that mean Cakewalk only has a future under the umbrella of Steinberg and/or PreSonus? But joking aside... I'm delighted that the projects have been resurrected and will immediately back up my system, partly because I intend to upgrade to Windows 11.

Thanks again for your tips and comments...