Lost my work and was saving all the way through

I have been working on a project for the last three hours. Every time I made changes I would press save either via file or ctrl + S however the computer crashed and I pressed end task as the timer was spinning for a long time. When I went back into the project all my edited changes are gone zip zilch nothing. I was almost finished completing it. all the changes have been reset to what it was when I first started. This has never happened to me before the project is there but all the work I have been saving has vanished. Why, where can it be found???
 
Bemused cakewalk user

That sounds so hit and miss and probable but not probable project folder I shall go to and pray that it is there I put too much effort into it today for it to be gone...this has never happened before as I am so careful but obviously not careful enough
 

dappa1
That sounds so hit and miss and probable but not probable project folder I shall go to and pray that it is there I put too much effort into it today for it to be gone...this has never happened before as I am so careful but obviously not careful enough
 

Well that's the thing with a "crash". The program stops working so it may or may not have the chance to properly Save to disk.
 
I know it seems dumb (and it is) that even if you Save that a snapshot of the project when it was last saved may not be fully preserved on disk but that simply seems to be the way it is. The only way to guarantee that snapshot will be there seems to be to either do a Save As (or I guess these days a Save Copy As... which might be a better option for you) or closing the project after a plain old "Save" action so when Sonar shuts down it properly saves to disk.
 
I am not sure WHY the simple act of keeping the project open after doing a simple Save sometimes loses those Saves and Cake should look into it if it is still occurring but I have moved waaaay beyond having to think about that stuff because X2 forced me to be a vigilant "Save As-er".
 
I simply haven't had these problems since I adopted this type of project management. It has been glorious. It also helps that Sonar has become pretty darn stable in recent years but still... I ain't taking the risk.
 
I think project versions are ultra tiny as far as disk space usage anyway so it's not like it really hurts anything to go apeballs on the versioning.
 
Anyhoosits... I hope you do find your project. Fingers crossed. I have a feeling it will be there.
 
If it is though... rememeber that "project corruption" thing I mentioned after a crash. I would take steps to migrate everything into a brand spankin' new project as best I can because really... once a project crashes once it (IME) is FAAAAR more likely to continue crashing and eventually fully corrupt. Moving everything to a new project (via manual exports/imports/Track and Bus Presets/etc) cleans the slate of any potential Sonar gremlins.
 
Good luck.

I've had this happen before.
For me, (after a crash) if I try to re-open the project from the "recently opened projects" list under FILE, i get the not-updated project.  However, if I select OPEN and go to the project file itself, it opens the most-recently saved version (can be validated by finding the 'modified date' field).
Seems to be related to the link in the dropdown not getting a chance to update itself due to the crash.

I use versioning. Set to 999.
And often came the day when I wanted to go back 10 days to copy an old recording into the current version.
It is also a good idea to backup the whole drive ** daily **. The best solution is a NAS-Server for daily backups and an automatic backup software.

Weird, Beepster.  I've never had my most recent version not in the RP list, outside of crashes.
If I save/close/shut down properly, the most recent version is listed the next time i open Sonar.

Beepster
Yes. That will happen sometimes when only using "Save". That is why it is better to do a "Save As" for each significant project "milestone". Like you get your drums down, "Save As". You get your bass down "Save As". Etc.
 
Just using "Save" is hit or miss because if a crash occurs then SOMETIMES you can get your project back or at least to a certain point but IME you are just as likely to lose everything (mind you I haven't been in that position since X2 which taught me to be hyper vigilant about manual project versioning via Save As)....

I don't understand why using "Save" is hit or miss. Like you, I do "Save As" to a new file name (i.e. Title, Date, Rev x) when I have major changes. In the past I kept hitting save almost everytime I took a breath for fear of losing what I've had done. When I did have a crash, I could open the last saved file and it indeed always gave me back what I had when I hit save. Am I just lucky that "Save" always worked?
 
But somewhere along the update trail, (for me at least) Splat has been so stable, I can't remember when I had the last crash! While this is good news I worry that it has given me a (false?) sense of security and I don't hit save as often as I used to. (Every 15 minutes or so).
 
Now that I've said that, I going to find a piece of wood to knock on....
 
Walt
 
 
 
 

Sorry Beepster...
I had a instrumental that I did a few years ago on X1 I recently put some vocals on top of the song, I changed the version over to Platinum and was saving in Platinum however Platinum crashed and could not recover the saved changes. I went back to X1 and opened the project and it was the old copy. Went back to Platinum and it was not there. I opened up X1 and went to revert and the last saved was in there. I clicked on it and the project I worked on today opened up. Accept for the plug ins that come with Platinum. 
 

It's not just Sonar I've seem this sort of behaviour in, I've had it happen in Photoshop and Lightroom in the past as well. Stuff that should have been saved either not being there after an application crash or there but an "older" version missing the editing done in the session that crashed.

My safety measure has been frequent auto-saves, versioning and frequent use of "save as". And frequent back-ups. One thing nearly 40 years of computer use has taught me is that data that exists in an application, which means in RAM only or maybe as a temp file as well, is a ghost until it's saved to permanent storage. And until that's backed up to a different drive, not just a different partition on the same drive, it's just a slightly less ephemeral ghost. And data on punched paper tape was just as temporary, as the readers were quite capable of chewing up the tape to the point they couldn't read it.

Window's partial answer to the problem is the "system restore" function, though it's far from bullet-proof. Apple's is Time Machine which by default backs up all new data to whatever drive has been selected for the purpose on an hourly basis. The problem is that's fine when working with "typical user" amounts of data, where most big files like media stuff gets written once then left alone and the user isn't creating maybe hundreds of megabytes of data every hour - which is exactly what DAWs and video editors do. Both approaches can eat up huge amounts of disk space, and Time Machine can be endlessly churning away trying to keep up.

So "save as" often, use autosave and use versioning. And as soon as you're through with something, back the data up to another drive.

As for losing current data when Sonar crashes, I wonder to what extent the Windows file-writing system is at least partially responsible. It's meant to not store as soon as the "save" command is used, but instead to tag the cache of data in RAM as to be stored then write it to disk when system usage gives it a suitable "gap" to do it in. By default Window's caching is "off" in Sonar and in theory audio is written to disk as it's recorded - a practice that goes back to the days when RAM was measured in MB not GB and an audio file would rapidly occupy all the RAM if not streamed straight to (and from) the disk. It should also protect against the loss of recently recorded audio if the application crashes because that audio should have been written to disk as it's recorded.

Yet sometimes it isn't there, which makes me wonder if the data is on the drive but Windows hasn't yet written the relevant file table entries so can't see it. Only software that can find chunks of long-deleted files can't find the data either.

So I guess we're stuck with the "save early, save often, version and save-as" routine.

Not sure why you apologized but yeah... cross version projects can of course be problematic as well.
 
What you just describe, although SPlat is supposed to be backwards compatible with projects created in earlier versions, is another case where you may want to consider a) finishing the project in the version that created it or b) fully migrating all files (MIDI, Audio, Track Presets, etc) to a NEW project in your current version.
 
That said I think most X3 or later projects should be pretty safe to open in the modern version of Sonar. For X2 or earlier a migration is probably the safest route.
 
If any of the discontinued plugs used in a previous project (like say VC64 or VVocal) aren't appearing or causing problems there are ways to get them into the project (making sure they are installed/VST scan/refresh browser/etc) but some of those things were removed for a reason (32 bit/unstable/whatevs and in this case are what likely caused you crash in the first place). So in those cases (starting work on an old project using the modern version of Sonar) you may want to abandon those old plugins and redo the work using their more modern replacements (eg: using Melodyne instead of VVocal for pitch correction).
 
Most of the old plugs have been replaced with comparable plugs that are usually better and definitely more stable.
 
The PITA in that scenario is learning and re-kerjiggering the newer plugs to do what you had done originally.
 
Two ways to deal with that would be...
 
a) Simply finish the project in the Sonar version you created it in (in this case X1)
 
or
 
b) Open the project in the original version and export an audio file with all those old effects active. Then you can get the effects printed to the track and just import it into your new "SPlat" project. Of course you cannot adjust those effects after doing that (at least not in the new project) so make sure you really think about the export beforehand. You can of course always go back to the old Sonar version/project to make adjustments on those old plugs, rexport and drag that into your newer project.
 
 
Just tons of ways to do this to full satisfaction. You just kind of have to be a little creative about it all and willing to piss around a bit.
 
Cheers.

dappa1
Slugbaby
 
I went back to X1 and it was in there under revert!!!

I doubt X1 would recognize a SPLAT file, so it probably opened the last X1 with that project name.

I seriously hope you are not bouncing back and forth between versions and saving the original project(s) in both versions.
 
You should have retained a totally pure copy of the original and only AFTER doing a new Save As version experimenting with all of this.
 
If you are reopening the original file in multiple versions and doing crud to it then just saving under the original name... well that seems like a recipe for corruption.
 
Just pointing that out in case that's what you're doing.
 
Seriously... at this point just spend some time exporting and migrating into a new project. It's the only way to be sure.

There may be others, but Aux Tracks/Patchpoints would have to confuse the BeHayZeus out of X-series versions.

Slugbaby
I've had this happen before.
For me, (after a crash) if I try to re-open the project from the "recently opened projects" list under FILE, i get the not-updated project.  However, if I select OPEN and go to the project file itself, it opens the most-recently saved version (can be validated by finding the 'modified date' field).
Seems to be related to the link in the dropdown not getting a chance to update itself due to the crash.

^^^This. Updating the Recent Files entry in the registry is apparently one of the last things SONAR does before it shuts down. Consequently, if you crash while working on a new project it won't show up on the list, even though it's intact on disk. I don't use versioning, but I would imagine the same principle applies.

This could go on and on as it is an apparent fundamental issue with Sonar (cross version project incompatability/corruption).

Old projects are best finished in the original version they were made in. This is why I'm installing every Sonar version I own on my new system. If that doesn't work then I'll have to keep the old computer to finish them instead of selling it.

Is it even worth trying to sell an XP or Windows 7 laptop these days?