Cactus Music
...the best solution is to be in the habit of hitting the "save" button after each successful take or after around 10 minutes of editing.

I'm in the habit of hitting Ctrl-S often.  It's almost become a reflex.

I did have auto-save enabled but somehow this time the auto-save also failed.  There was some message I think indicating that because recording was in progress when it crashed, it couldn't open.  Then there was some other recovery option, but it gave me a blank project.   (I don't recall exactly.  I may try opening it again, and send Cakewalk a bug report with the details)
Auto-Save has saved me before and I do recommend using it.  I also hit Ctrl-S every time I think of it which probably saved me from even more loss.