I got up to Windows 10 speed today, just humming along. Stayed up late to play catch up. Did a lot of good work. Went about 45 minutes without saving. BAM - doing a fader ride, I get the hazy white screen of screwed again. Will Sonar/Windows EVER develop a way to be able to retrieve a project when this happens? I'd pay dearly for it. The best work I did was in the last 45 minutes. Mix was really dialing in, and now I couldn't guess what I did to make it happen again. Well fed up of it.

There is a way to retrieve a project when this happens but it requires doing incremental saves either by using auto save or manually saving. I wouldn't go 4 or 5 minutes without saving. Why on earth would you go 45 minutes without saving. Sorry but going Ctrl + S isn't very hard to do.

If you don't value your efforts enough to save them regularly then I'm sure nothing I can say or do will make you develop those good habits. No point in blaming Sonar or Windows for that matter. You had 45 minutes to save your work 10 or more times. Sorry I'm not sympathetic. The important thing is for you to learn the lesson to save your work. Regularly and in smal. Increments.

I MUST PRESS Ctrl + S regularly.

Every time I make some change that results in an "ooh, I like that!" moment, CTL-S is an automatic reflex.
 
Same is true when I'm creating a long and detailed Word document or Excel spreadsheet.
 

I've talked about this before on here, but there's no good reason to have auto-save switched off. Whenever you talk to people about why they do have it switched off, they (mostly) have one of two reasons, both of which are based on a misapprehension:
 
1/ I don't want recording / playback interrupted by a save
This doesn't happen. Sonar will never auto save during recording or playback, no matter what the auto-save settings.
Interestingly, though, you can manually save during playback, and I've never had that cause any issues.
 
2/ I don't want Auto-Save to overwrite my project.
 
It doesn't. It creates a new file called "auto-save of xxxxxxxx.cwp". And you can generally ignore these files unless you need to recover after a crash.
 
There is a third reason not to use auto-save which is a good one. On very complex projects, the save can get slow enough to be a bit of an interruption to working. But if you're not having that problem, there's no other reason not to have it switched on.
 
So I think in answer to the OP's question: "Will Sonar/Windows EVER develop a way to be able to retrieve a project when this happens?", I'd say Sonar has developed a way, and it's Auto-Save. It's not perfect, but on the other hand, I haven't lost more than five minutes' work in literally years. I think it's almost a decade since this was last an issue for me.

I certainly appreciate the ideas, and to an extent the lashing. The thing is, I NEVER remember to do that. When I work, my focus has always been so high on it that it never crosses my mind. I'm the same way at my other job. I have to do paperwork on my own time because the job is all my brain can see. The thing about it is, I've worked 6 hours without an issue. If this thing was consistently screwing my work to death, I'd probably be 100% on it. But, it lulls you into the false sense of security.  
 
After all these years of these products being marketed, imo one should be able to work at will. I was working fast and furious on a emergency basis for a cd submittal, so I kinda needed PC fear to not be an issue. But it's always an issue.  
 
Thanks for a good explanation, John T. I'm going in right now to set up auto-save. I had it on years ago, but it scared the crap out of me every time it does it, watching the screen do something I didn't do. Gonna have to get used to it, but will be worth it I guess. While doing that, it would make sense to follow Craig's latest backup tip of the week at the same time, as this will surely take more drive space than before. Thanks for chiming in gents. Peace

John T
I've talked about this before on here, but there's no good reason to have auto-save switched off. Whenever you talk to people about why they do have it switched off, they (mostly) have one of two reasons, both of which are based on a misapprehension:
 
1/ I don't want recording / playback interrupted by a save
This doesn't happen. Sonar will never auto save during recording or playback, no matter what the auto-save settings.
Interestingly, though, you can manually save during playback, and I've never had that cause any issues.
 
2/ I don't want Auto-Save to overwrite my project.
 
It doesn't. It creates a new file called "auto-save of xxxxxxxx.cwp". And you can generally ignore these files unless you need to recover after a crash.
 
There is a third reason not to use auto-save which is a good one. On very complex projects, the save can get slow enough to be a bit of an interruption to working. But if you're not having that problem, there's no other reason not to have it switched on.
 
So I think in answer to the OP's question: "Will Sonar/Windows EVER develop a way to be able to retrieve a project when this happens?", I'd say Sonar has developed a way, and it's Auto-Save. It's not perfect, but on the other hand, I haven't lost more than five minutes' work in literally years. I think it's almost a decade since this was last an issue for me.

 
Exactly this ^^^^

jshep0102
After all these years of these products being marketed, imo one should be able to work at will. I was working fast and furious on a emergency basis for a cd submittal, so I kinda needed PC fear to not be an issue. But it's always an issue. 

Well, the thing is, there's really only one answer, and that's some form of auto-save. I suppose ideally, it would be a little more invisible to the user, but the bottom line is that the file needs saving periodically, whether that's by the user or automatically. That's just how computers are.
 

The two rules of data.

Anything not saved does not exist. It is a temporary illusion that can disappear in a millisecond.

Anything saved on only one medium and not backed up onto at least one other different drive (not partition on the same drive but an entirely different drive) exits but only temporarily. It is here today but may not be here tomorrow.

Years ago I worked with someone who one morning came into the office in a frantic state of mind. Her MA thesis was due in next week and her laptop's drive which contained the thesis and all her notes and data had just failed, to the extent BIOS didn't recognise it.

She could, of course, have simply reloaded her most recent backup and continued working on her old desktop PC. But there weren't any backups because, as she explained, she was just "far too busy" and "didn't have the time to waste" setting up automatic backups or even just copying stuff to an external drive.

So she sent a panicked email to her MA supervisor and packed the laptop off to the manufacturer to see if things could be fixed. The manufacturer lost the computer.....

The reason for my strong words (please don't take them personally) is that it takes a significant change in thinking to change an entrenched behaviour. Believe me, I know from personal experience.

But all the help a program can offer, is no help if the feature is not used. As John T said there are some misconceptions about AutoSave and sometimes mis-Information is even more difficult to over turn than teaching folks about a feature in the first place.. I hope your experience teaches you to modify your creative process to include the necessary save and backup of your work. All the best.

So the OP should change his title to
 
Some people never change
 
??