I need to kill something...

Hi here,
 
Pissed off as I can't express...
 
First, I have a project I'm working on since a couple of month.
 
All 10 songs are lined up, so the project is 45 minutes long.
 
An hour ago, I tried to record the last lead line, the guitar was over after this one.  The audio engine dropped out. I tryied again. It dropped again almost at the same place (4-5 seconds after hitting record). 1, 2, 3 times in a row...
 
I tryied the usual things: Increase the Audio buffer, increase playback and recording buffer. No change at all.
 
I saved the project, took A WHILE and rebooted.
 
Now Sonar don't recognise the project and want me to start in safe mode. I did that. Sonar loaded a completely blank project. Nice  Same thing with the auto saved version.
 
Now I can't open my project at all.  It's been a while I've not been THAT much upset, so I guessed it was time for me to ask for help... it was working good before it started to BREAK. Have I too much pieces of clips in the project? The last time I saved, the save bar stayed stock at 50%.... I don't know what to think.
 
Here is my system:
 
AMD FX-8350 at 4ghz
Gigabyte with 990 chipset
16 gb AMD performance ram @1600ghz
Firepro V4900 video card
120 gb ssd for programs and 120 ssd for active projects
 
V-studio 700 console
V-studio 700 audio interface
Octa-capture in vs-expand mode
All with latest drivers and firmware
 
Windows 7 x64
Sonar X2a producer
 
Thanks for any help, I would REALLY appreciate to reopen that project.....

The audio should be there. I would try to import that into a new blank project. 
 
 
BTW I nave been trying to post for awhile now. 

loll yeah I won't ever save again...
 
Ok so it look like it's what I fear it is.... this project is DEAD so I have to create a new one and import each single clip back in it, redo the tempo map and everything....
 
I'm kinda lucky only the guitar were done so far, even if I have something like 2000 clips in my audio folder... anyway, let's go back to work....
 
Thanks for the answers folks :)

this is a great lesson in back up.
not just because it could be sonar or things along these lines but I back up everything not just my digital audio files.
my word doc, photoshop docs, exc.
 
I know its not what you want to hear but hopefully we live and learn :)
 
good luck.

First of all.... all may not be lost.  Read on down a bit, as I think this happened to me and I was able to recover the project with minor loss to the tracks and latest edits.
 
....when recording.......  save the projects often.  ALWAYS!!  Click on the SAVE icon, I don't use autosave.
 
Never have 2 different songs in the same project. Always have each song in it's own unique project. You can use any common CD burner program later to put the songs into a CD project in whatever order you want.
 
I would try one other thing before spending all that time to rework the 45 minutes of music...... it's worth a try.
 
Do a System Restore to a restore point before the crash of the project. You might be pleasantly surprised to see the project is not a total loss. I think I used this to recover a project that crashed in the very same manner you described. You will of course lose the latest tracks you recorded but the project will be (should be) there.
 
If you do manage to recover it.... save it first, then split that sucker up into it's individual parts and learn the lesson from this.

If you can use system restore to recover a shadow copy of the file, you should also be able to right click and choose properties... Then restore previous version.

This only works if you have set the drive up for it.

I often mix a whole nite in one project, but I am careful with backups. So, not a big deal for me to have thirty songs in one project. I'm just telling you so you don't feel alone.

The strange thing is that I had some backup (3) made by the auto-save feature (which I'll disable, since I save every 30 seconds, no jokes) but since they are so close in time (10 minutes between each) the project was already half corrupted and I could not open the oldest one.
 
Anyway, I'll think about a new way to backup my files more often, probably abusing the "save as" function.
 
The reason why I lay all the songs back to back is because once I playback the whole project, I mix one time and have consistency through all songs, instead of always having to copy the settings from song to song, or delete, save as and paste the new song into the "mixed" project etc.
 
It work like playing a mix from a tape multi-tracker and mixing through a hardware console, with all basic effects applyied. I love this seriously.
 
So, to avoid confusion in Sonar, I discovered that bouncing the clips parts to complete tracks make it MUCH easier for Sonar to handle. So here is what I'll do:
 
1. Create a project named "Song1" (whatever)
2. Once Song1 is finished (backup to taste while recording....), save as "Song2" and  bounce every clips togheter 
3. Finish "Song2", save as "Song3", bounce to clip
4. Repeat until the end of times, or 'till the end of the album, whichever come first
 
So this way you always have a copy of the song in "take format" in case you bounced it without noticing some mistakes or need to revert the bouncing operation for whatever reason.
 
I did this in 2010 (been a while I haven't recorded... this can explain my super-fail here) with a 60 minutes/72 tracks album on a intel E5200 core 2 duo at 2.5ghz with 2 gb of ram on a 5200rpm HDD with Sonar Studio 8... and it was running smoothly (everything bounced, nothing freezed), so let's just say that today's machines are more than up to the task.
 
Too bad I can't use system recovery because of "system optimisation for DAW"... anyway, I'm sure that the remake will be even better! 
 
Thanks for your help all, and seriously, all tracks on the same project, when used WISELY, is really nice to mix 

The strange thing is that I had some backup (3) made by the auto-save feature (which I'll disable, since I save every 30 seconds, no jokes) but since they are so close in time (10 minutes between each) the project was already half corrupted and I could not open the oldest one.
 
Anyway, I'll think about a new way to backup my files more often, probably abusing the "save as" function.

Save and Backing up are 2 different things. One should never think they are backing up when you just save a project. Saving just saves it with the original CWP and audio folder and at its original location. Backing up will save it to a new hard drive with a new CWP and audio folder.
 
One is not the other and the other is not the one
 
CJ

I really hate these threads because they come up way too often. If there's absolutely one thing a DAW should never do under any circumstance, and may require one or more fail safes: it's corrupt project files. When it comes to all the issues and feature requests Cakewalk should have on their development list, making it so Sonar never corrupts a project again should be number 1 on the list. If this means saving backup files of the projects, and backups of those backups, unbeknownst to the user, then so be it. Ultimately, they should find out what's causing the corruption in the first place and fix the bug. In addition, they could rollback a "save over" when the save is not successful by doing a check prior to overwriting. There's a lot Cakewalk could be doing on that front.
 
As a user, is it a best practice to keep multiple versions of a project, and backup regularly? Yes. I certainly do it. Should Sonar corrupt projects as often as it does? No. There's something wrong with that. I've never lost a project in Studio One, Reaper, or Photoshop (I bring it up because it's "pro" software). Could you imagine video editing software doing the same on a multi-million dollar movie?