Recovery
From Audacity Manual
In the event of a crash while Audacity has unsaved data (such as a recording that has not yet been saved as a project, or an existing project with unsaved changes), Audacity will attempt to recover that data on next launch.
Note: If you choose the audio cache option in Directories Preferences to cache data to RAM (memory), no data will be written to disk during a recording. Recoverable data will be written to disk after recording stops, but recordings that crash in progress will not be recovered.
Automatic Crash Recovery
- Quit Audacity: Exits Audacity without any changes. The Automatic Crash Recovery dialog will reappear next time you launch Audacity.
- Do Not Recover: Discards the unsaved data. You will receive a prompt asking if you are sure this is what you want to do. If you confirm that you don't want to recover any projects, they will not be recoverable later.
- Recover Projects: Attempts to recover the unsaved data and load the waveforms into Audacity.
After recovery, the data is still in unsaved state. It is recommended to use to save the recovered project immediately. If the project is not saved when you exit, Audacity will prompt if you want to save the changes. If you choose not to save, the data will be deleted and not recoverable.
Manual Recovery
If Automatic Crash Recovery does not work, you can recover the available data manually using our crash recovery tools.
The audio data will be in Audacity's temporary folder if you had never saved a project before the crash. The location of the temporary folder can be found by looking in Directories Preferences. If you had saved the project previously, the data will be in the _data folder inside the directory containing the .aup project file.
