How to Recover Lost Audacity Audio Recordings

Audacity User 1: ‘I accidently deleted Audacity project from my PC. I had spent several hours on this work. Is there a way to recover lost audio recordings?’

Audacity User 2: ‘While working on an audio project in Audacity, I experienced a software crash. Now I am unable to recover my lost project recording from temporary folder? Please help.’

Audacity is a popular audio recording tool used by radio jockeys, sound recordists, and musicians. It is also used for recording video voice-over or podcasting.  But Audacity projects should not be used to store audio projects for long term. It is advisable to export audio files for archival. However, if you have experienced audio file loss situation, then scroll this blog to know how to recover lost Audacity audio recording.

How to recover lost audacity audio recordings?

The open source audio editor has a feature to save recorded files in temporary folder as soon the recording process gets completed. If you have lost your audio files while working due to crash of the computer or the software, you can restore the last work done from temp files.

However, if your saved Audacity projects are lost from the drive or storage media, Stellar Photo Recovery is the safest way to recover lost audio project.

Solution 1: Use audio file recovery software that supports file formats of Audacity

Used in Situation:  Your audacity files were saved in the computer drive, memory card, USB drive or hard drive. You may lose the audio files due to accident deletion, formatting, virus infection, system crash, Audacity crash, or corruption in the drive etc.

How to use: The do-it-yourself Stellar Photo Recovery supports Audacity audio file formats. The Stellar software approach is the easiest and the assured way to get back lost Audacity recordings. It supports the recovery of audio files of WAV, AIFF, MP3, WMA, AAC, AMR and other file formats from hard drive, memory cards, SD cards, and USB flash drives. The software is completely safe to download and is trusted by millions of users around the world.

Steps to recover lost/deleted Audacity recordings

1. Download and Run Stellar Photo Recovery on your PC
2. Connect the storage media with PC
3. On the home screen of the software click on Recover Photo, Audio, & Files.
4. Select the drive letter. Check in Scan for Audio Click on Scan Now.
5. The found audio files are listed. Select the audio files that you want to recover.
6. Click Recover and save at your desired location

 Watch the video to recover lost Audacity recordings using Stellar Photo Recovery

Solution 2: Reinstall the driver

Used in Situation: If the system does not recognize your memory card or USB drive containing the .au files.

How to use: To reinstall the driver on your system follow the below steps:

• Go to My Computer and right click on it
• Follow Manage > Device Manager
• Double-click Disk Drives from the list and right click on the name of your removable drive
• Click Click OK

Solution 3: Perform Chkdsk

Used in Situation: Unable to access audio files due errors like ‘You need to format the disk before using it.’

How to use: The check disk command resolves minor corruptions in the storage giving you access to the stored audio files. Follow below steps to perform Chkdsk:

• Type cmd in the Windows search box
• Right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator
• Type chkdsk < SD card drive letter>:/f (e.g., chkdsk E: /f)
• Press Enter

Solution 4: Audacity Recovery utility

Used in Situation:  Lost audio recording after Audacity crash? It may happen if you are working on Audacity, and suddenly the program crashed. Your work was not saved before crash.

How to use: There are two ways to recover lost files using Audacity Recovery Utility after Audacity crash:

1. Automatic Crash Recovery
2. Manual Recovery from temp. folder (apply when Automatic crash recovery does not work)

1. How to recover with Automatic Crash Recovery

While working, if the Audacity program crashes, and you did not save the changes in the project or have a recording that was not yet saved as a project, Audacity has the feature to recover that data on next launch from an Autosave recovery file.

Next time when you launch the program, a recovery dialog box as below will appear, asking to recover project.

Device Manager • Double-click Disk Drives from the list and right click on the name of your removable drive • Click Uninstall. Click OK Approach 3: Perform Chkdsk Used in Situation: Unable to access audio files due errors like ‘You need to format the disk before using it.’ How to use: The check disk command resolves minor corruptions in the storage giving you access to the stored audio files. Follow below steps to perform Chkdsk: • Type cmd in the Windows search box • Right-click cmd and select Run as Administrator • Type chkdsk < SD card drive letter>:/f (e.g., chkdsk E: /f) • Press Enter Approach 4: Audacity Recovery utility Used in Situation: Lost audio recording after Audacity crash? It may happen if you are working on Audacity, and suddenly the program crashed. Your work was not saved before crash. How to use: There are two ways to recover lost files using Audacity Recovery Utility after Audacity crash: 1. Automatic Crash Recovery 2. Manual Recovery from temp. folder (apply when Automatic crash recovery does not work) 1. How to recover with Automatic Crash Recovery While working, if the Audacity program crashes, and you did not save the changes in the project or have a recording that was not yet saved as a project, Audacity has feature to recover that data on next launch from an Autosave recovery file. Next time when you launch the program, a recovery dialog box as below will appear, asking to recover project. ” width=”381″ height=”295″>

Recovery dialog box

It will display the project name in the list of recoverable projects with the date and time of the autosave file preceded by either the name of the project or ‘New Project’ if the project was never saved as a .aup file.

Click on Recover Projects to recover the unsaved data for all projects, and load the recovered waveforms.

2. How to recover through Manual Recovery after crash

Manual recovery should be applied when the Automatic crash recovery does not work.

You can recover unsaved AUP project file from the Audacity’s temporary folder. Get the exact location of temp files from in Directories Preferences. By default the location of the Audacity temporary folder is usually as follows:

In Windows: C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Audacity\SessionData

In Mac: /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/audacity/SessionData

View the location of temp files under Directories Preferences

View the location of temp files under Directories Preferences

View the location of temp files under Directories Preferences

Use the ‘Import Audio’ command to import all the .au files from the Audacity temporary folder and save them as projects.

The bottom line

Audacity automatic recovery utility works in the event of crash, but does not guarantee complete or proper recovery of all .au files. The procedure is also cumbersome for beginners or non-technical users. It is recommended to take the software approach to recover the lost audacity recordings from your computer or other storage media. Stellar Photo Recovery is the easiest and safest way to get back your lost audio recordings in any situation. Moreover, unlike Audacity recovery utility, it recovers lost files without hampering the original quality of your Audacity recording project.