An entire project .cwp gone vanished

[onlyinitforthemoney]

I was working in Sonar free tier on a song

then i notice the Kick track FX Bin is empty, no more plugins in the bin

but no change in the sound it sounds the same as before, but without plugins in the FX Bin

After minutes trying to figure this thing out i save the session, close Sonar restart Sonar but

can't open the project, Sonar says it can't find it

it's gone, the file .cwp is gone

nowhere to be found, Windows can't find it

In your opinions what happened?

P.S. (I have an earlier version but have to redo hours of work)

Edited August 8 by onlyinitforthemoney

[sjoens]

Sounds like new Sonar has some new tricks up it's sleeve.  Previous Sonar versions would sometimes do this after a crash.  I now save new iterations of a project with each major change.  Hours of work may be lost but at least you have a starting point with an earlier project.  Save and save often.

[onlyinitforthemoney]

If it's Sonar fault, this is F?%$/ up This kind of thing never ever happened to me before

For the last 20 years i've worked music OFFLINE always, except for this project,

I wonder if being online has anything to do with this.

 

[sjoens]

Can't say it's happened here for quite a while so it could be almost anything.  A crash dump may reveal something. 

[Colin Nicholls]

Did you save the session with a known name to a known location? Portable hard drive no longer connected? Search your drives for the file name, or heck, *.cwp? 

If Sonar didn't actually crash or show an error , then I bet the .cwp does exist somewhere.

 

[onlyinitforthemoney]

2 hours ago, Colin Nicholls said:

Did you save the session with a known name to a known location? Portable hard drive no longer connected? Search your drives for the file name, or heck, *.cwp? 

If Sonar didn't actually crash or show an error , then I bet the .cwp does exist somewhere.

 

Yes known name and location

Hard drive not portable

I've search the drive again just now, i found the shortcut wich says:

---The item .cwp that this shortcut refers to has been changed or moved---

 

[sjoens]

Possibly it's completely gone.  If it's been marked for overwriting: "$ySong.cwp", Everything may find it.

[Amberwolf]

On 8/8/2025 at 4:58 PM, sjoens said:

  Save and save often.

I would always change the way this is said to 

"SaveAs early, SaveAs Often, and don't forget to SaveAs, and Never Save."

 

(because the Save function overwrites a file that you already "know" saved, and if something goes wrong during this process, you lose both old and new.  SaveAs does not overwrite anything (assuming no OS or hardware failures  ). 

 

[sjoens]

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

"SaveAs early, SaveAs Often, and don't forget to SaveAs, and Never Save."

I do both!  Save after every few edits and Save As after major changes.  Hard drive would load up too fast if I only did the latter.  

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

(assuming no OS or hardware failures  )

. . . or power outages.  It goes out at will for any reason, every reason, or no reason at all, here. 

Always use a BBU or Generac if you're on the grid.