If you de-fragged the hard drive, remember that is a process where files are moved and old ones over written.
Did you also empty the recycling bin? Does the Clean Audio Folder function even throw the files into the recycling bin or does it just vaporize them? IDK.
Yeah.... bad scene... those files are very likely gone permanently.
With the size of hard drives these days, it is just so much easier NOT to use the "Clean Audio Folder" function at all.
BUT... if you really do need the drive space freed up, I would recommend getting a good external 1TB USB drive and use copy/cut/paste to move the old Cakewalk projects and folders off the old drive. OR, burn a DVD data disk with one song per disk and catalog the disks for future reference. Disks are under a buck each and the 1TB drives are under $100 and you can store hundreds of large song projects on each one...... well worth the money. If you only connect it to save songs, it will last forever. I keep mine connected and so far, have not had a failure on either of the 2 I own.
Once you have the files SAFELY moved..... AND TESTED by opening them from their new location, then and only then would you ever want to do a delete, defrag command on the old ones to recover the space.
It's a hard lesson to learn but one you are not likely to forget.
I like to have 2 duplicate back up copies of the files. As I work on the project, it resides in my C drive in Cakewalk Projects.... after I'm done, and about every 4 months or so I move it out of C to my storage drive and make a backup copy on my external drive.
I never use the Clean Audio folder. It is, to my understanding, an all comprehensive deletion of cakewalk audio files. IF cakewalk ever decided to tweeze it so that it can be applied to ONE SPECIFIC PROJECT at a time, I would use it. The idea of turning it loose to search my entire computer for cake audio files to delete scares the living daylights out of me.
I believe I used it many years ago on Cakewalk Pro 8 and had devastating results as well. Lots of missing things in my projects. Lesson learned.
ADD: unfortunately cake files are not stored with names..... they use numbers IIRC.... so doing a search would be hard. BUT... you can search using the *.XXX command with the XXX being the file type..... just look in an exiting folder at an audio file to get that..... but then you will likely turn up hundreds if not thousands of those files, and with numbers..... that my friend is like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack...... load and listen to each one..... then drag it to the proper song folder and then import it back into the song and then line it up properly...... just so much easier to record that clip again..... but that also could be a monumental task......
Dang..... that is all so cheery and encouraging.
Probably better to move on with a lesson learned.
Oh... one more thing. I had a song project that I was working on and decided that I didn't need a few tracks. So I deleted them from inside the project. I closed the project and next day when I opened it again, I realized that I had not checked, and that in fact my main vocal track had been highlighted and was now deleted. It was not a complete track but was in fact a series of clips in the track.....all gone. BUT, I know that cake does not delete them. It keeps them in the audio folder as orphans. So in theory, all I had to do was find them and re-import them to a new track. I had to find them in a folder which contained many dozens of files. I eventually did, and yes I restored them and had to re-position them properly, but I did restore the vocal track. Lesson learned...double check what is highlighted before deleting.
post edited by Guitarhacker - 2012/05/02 08:55:07