Chris, the honest answer is that it depends on exactly what you saved to your back-up discs.
If you just saved the .wrk files on their own, I'm afraid that when you open them in
any Cakewalk software (including GT2) all you'll end up with in the project will be the saved settings of all the controls (e.g. track volumes and pans, markers etc) and the
names of any effects you inserted. Crucially, your projects won't contain the all-important recorded and imported audio .wav files. Not quite so important, but also worth mentioning, is that if you used any of GT's effects that are not included in the software you use to open the files, these will be missing too.
The reason for this is that .wrk (project) files and .bun (bundle) files store your projects in a different way. A bundle file is a single file that incorporates all project information and all the associated audio data. Project (originally called 'work' files, hence the 'wrk' extension) files only save the project information, the associated .wav audio data is saved elsewhere on your computer. By default, the audio from
all your projects is stored in a so-called
Wavedata Folder. When you subsequently open a project file, it automatically 'searches' this Wavedata folder and opens the correct audio files into the project. The project also recognises where in the song (e.g. which track and at what time in the project) each .wav file should be inserted.
If all you saved were the .wrk files, then the bad news is that, although they will open, they will be next to useless as they won't contain any audio.
If however, in addition to the .wrk files, you also saved the Wavedata Folder to your back-up discs, then there is a reasonable chance that you will be able to open your projects correctly in any Cakewalk software. It's a bit of a fiddly process, but it should mean you'll be successful, providing you actually have all the audio data for the associated projects.
To check exactly what is on your back-up discs, insert the discs and open them in Windows Explorer and have a look. If you haven't already done so, go to
Control Panel and open
Folder Options. Click on the
View tab and make sure the
Hide extensions of known file types option is unchecked. Another clue to what you have is in the size of the back-ups. A typical .wrk file for a 3 or 4 minute song might be between 500KB to 1MB in size, whereas as 3 minute song with just 5 audio tracks will have around 150MB of associated audio files.
Assuming you have both 'wrk files and audio .wav files on your back-ups, what I would do first is install the new software. Now you'll need to copy all your backed-up files and folders to your PC.
Creates two new folders and name one of them
Project Files and the other
Audio Files - one for all the .wrk files, and the other (ideally) for the contents of all the separate Wavedata folders. Insert each back-up disc in turn and copy/drag all the .wrk files into the newly-created Project Files folder on your PC. If you have any duplicate .wrk files, it would help if you know which order your back-ups were created in. Personally, I would start with the
oldest back-up first. Then if you try to drag a more recent duplicate from a newer back-up disc, you can choose the 'Replace' option when prompted.
Next, you'll need to drag the contents of all the Wavedata folders across to the newly-created Audio Files folder on your PC. If your audio .wav files are conveniently backed-up in Wavedata folders this should be reasonably straightforward. If not, just drag
any audio files you find on your back-up discs across to your PC. When copy/dragging project .wav files across, they all have unique names, so it doesn't matter if you choose
Copy & Replace or
Don't Copy when you're prompted how to deal with any duplicates (but don't choose the
Copy But Keep Both Files option).
Now you'll need to open your Cakewalk software and find the Global folder in which it stores project audio files. By default, I believe the folder will have been automatically created here
C:\Cakewalk Projects\Audio Data when you installed the software. You can either drag/copy all the .wav files from your newly-created Audio Files folder into this folder, or use the Browse button and reassign the Audio Files folder as the default. If you want, you could also drag all the .wrk files into your Cakewalk software's Projects Folder - by default it will be located here
C:\Cakewalk Projects.
Personally speaking, I wouldn't move any of the files - I'd leave the .wrk files where they are, and direct your software to look for, and store, it's Project Audio Data in the 'Audio Files' folder you created. There is a good reason for this, and that's because while you can open the older format .wrk files (and .bun files for that matter) in newer Cakewalk software, you won't be able to save them as such. You'll be prompted to save them in either the current .cwp (Project) or .cwb (Bundle) format. If you do copy them across, and subsequently save them back into the project folder, you'll end up with a mix of .wrk and .cwp files sharing the same name.
Now for the important part!
With your Cakewalk software open, you'll need to find the Global Option to set
Use Per-project Audio Folders. Depending on which software you get, this option will probably be in
Edit>Preferences>File>Audio Data or possibly in
Options>Global>Audio Data. This option means that when you create and save projects, a project folder is created that will contain all the project data and all the associated audio files. This method is not only great for tidy file management, it also means that backing up your project is a breeze.
With this option set, select
File>Open from the menu bar and browse to the newly-created Project Files folder and open a project. Hopefully, the software will marry up the audio files to the project file and your song will open. If it does, I'd suggest the first thing you do is save it! Choose
.cwp as the file option to save and allow the software to save it in the (default)
Cakewalk Projects folder. Continue this process for each of your projects.
If for some reason it reports that (some) audio is missing, it might mean that the audio wasn't actually saved in your back-ups. If this is the case, then I'm afraid, that unless you can find those files elsewhere, the project will remain incomplete.
However, if you receive the 'missing audio' message, all is still not necessarily lost. The 'link' between the backed-up .wrk files and the associated audio may have somehow become corrupt (this has been known to happen occasionally even in bundle files). The audio may well be in the
Audio Files folder, but the project can't associate it.
It might involve a bit of detective work, but before abandoning any projects with 'missing' audio, you can actually trawl through the Audio Files folder you created and see if there are any .wav files with the name of the project in them. If you do find any such files, first open the corresponding project in your Cakewalk software, then use
File>Import Audio to navigate to the Audio Files folder and import these .wav files. They won't import to the correct track, or the correct time (they'll import to the active track, or to a new track/s if none is active, and they'll import at the Now Time Marker) but you might be able to drag them around and literally drop them into the correct place. A bit fiddly, but it should get the job done. Note that for complete accuracy when positioning any such audio files, it might help to switch off
Snap To Grid, which will only allow you to align the files to the resolution that Snap To Grid is set to.
Even if there are .wav files in the
Audio Folder whose name gives no clue as to which project they belong to, you could work through and open them in Windows Media Player (or your music player of choice) to see if you recognise which song they belong to. I'd advise that you rename them as you go, keeping the original part of the filename (it might contain a clue as to the track number etc) but adding the project name at the start of the name to keep them together alphabetically. Then, as I've outlined in the previous paragraph, import them into the relevant projects and reposition them.
Hopefully, this will get you somewhere near listening to your old recordings Chris, and as always, ask away if you need any more info.