I would like to point out, without claiming there is not some issue occurring, that many times things that are attributed to being Sonar's fault end up being caused by other factors, and it is potentially unfair to count posted threads as being conclusive just from unsubstantiated claims.
 
Again, I am not saying there isn't a potential bug in Sonar causing some difficult to reproduce corruption, I am just saying that unsubstantiated claims should not be relied upon to be factual.  There are a lot of folks with old hardware, maintenance-deficient operating systems, and all kinds of mixed 32-bit third-party plugins running in 64-bit Sonar, and I have seen quite a few complaints turn out to be something related to things like the above.
 
Anything that can be provided to Cakewalk Technical Support that would assist them in figuring out how something got corrupted would be extremely helpful, and even if the issue ends up being caused by some factor external to the Sonar code itself, having some idea of the cause would still go a long way to reducing or eliminating the problems from continuing to occur.
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 

robert_e_bone
...There are a lot of folks with old hardware, maintenance-deficient operating systems, and all kinds of mixed 32-bit third-party plugins running in 64-bit Sonar, and I have seen quite a few complaints turn out to be something related to things like the above.
 

Hey, I resemble that remark!!!!!    
 
A Q9300 w/ Win7 Sp1 (no updates since) and whatever 32bit plugins I happen to toss in.    And yet...  
 

Funkybot
I'm very strongly of the belief that 1) Sonar is way to picky about system configurations, and 2) something about Sonar's save routine makes it easier for projects to get corrupted than it should be. See these recent threads (there's a lot of input from Craig in the first one): http://forum.cakewalk.com/X3c-project-corruption-AGAIN-m2929795.aspx and  http://forum.cakewalk.com/Exceptionally-frustrating-X3c-experience-m2923620.aspx#2923913 If you search these forums on "corrupt projects" or "can't open projects" and other similar keywords, you basically end up with a whole lot of posts around this subject going back years, and a lot of responses that basically say 1) "doesn't happen here, must be your system," 2) "that's why I never use autosave," 3) "that's why you have to use autosave," 4) "you have to Ctrl+S to save regularly," and most of all: 5) "it's your fault for not backing up your projects more regularly." I just don't see that much energy on other DAW forums I frequent around these kinds of issues, and it's all over this forum. If Sonar's not directly at fault for all of these corrupt projects, then it's certainly not doing enough to prevent these issues IMO. I'm of the personal opinion that this is an area that deserves some major attention before X4, as there's just so many reports of similar problems for something not to be wrong.

FWIW, I had numerous instances of project files becoming corrupted in Pro Tools.

The thing that leads me to think it is not Sonar is that saving is a very well understood process in programing.  We would all have a problem across the board if a bug within Sonar were the cause. On the other hand all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with Sonar could cause file corruption. The biggest problem are bad sectors on the HD. Another are badly fragmented files. An NTFS disk is less vulnerable but not completely safe if no maintenance is ever done on them. Another is using the system disk for all file usage. It may receive too many write commands at the same time.  
 
One thing that really makes me think that it has nothing to do with Sonar is that if Sonar were crashing while saving then I would think that maybe that was the cause but that is not what is being claimed here. 
 
There are way too many other things that could go wrong or cause file corruption to just blame Sonar without any evidence.

My truncated files happen when I'm repeatedly crashing on the same bug. I'm not saying who is at fault for the bug. Like touching the fader on the second monitor on the second Tuesday of the month after your first beer. You crash, relaunch still drinking your first beer and crash again... And again.. .because your doing the same thing and hoping for a different result you get punished with corrupted files. Yes?

When I've been crashing on a project, I backup the project files before relaunching, just in case.

Auto-backup - use it or lose it.
 
TIA

Funkybot
I'm very strongly of the belief that 1) Sonar is way to picky about system configurations, and 2) something about Sonar's save routine makes it easier for projects to get corrupted than it should be. See these recent threads (there's a lot of input from Craig in the first one):
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/X3c-project-corruption-AGAIN-m2929795.aspx
 
and 
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Exceptionally-frustrating-X3c-experience-m2923620.aspx#2923913
 
If you search these forums on "corrupt projects" or "can't open projects" and other similar keywords, you basically end up with a whole lot of posts around this subject going back years, and a lot of responses that basically say 1) "doesn't happen here, must be your system," 2) "that's why I never use autosave," 3) "that's why you have to use autosave," 4) "you have to Ctrl+S to save regularly," and most of all: 5) "it's your fault for not backing up your projects more regularly."
 
I just don't see that much energy on other DAW forums I frequent around these kinds of issues, and it's all over this forum. If Sonar's not directly at fault for all of these corrupt projects, then it's certainly not doing enough to prevent these issues IMO. I'm of the personal opinion that this is an area that deserves some major attention before X4, as there's just so many reports of similar problems for something not to be wrong.

The Sonar X series indeed seems picky about computers, in particular older computers. Sonar "X" seems to have much fewer problems running on newer computers. Also staying as much 64bit as possible seems to help... at least from what I have read in threads about people having problems. I would absolutely upgrade to X3 and my next computer WILL be a Studiocat. I wanted to have it by now but circumstances... had other ideas.
J

gswitz
My truncated files happen when I'm repeatedly crashing on the same bug. I'm not saying who is at fault for the bug. Like touching the fader on the second monitor on the second Tuesday of the month after your first beer. You crash, relaunch still drinking your first beer and crash again... And again.. .because your doing the same thing and hoping for a different result you get punished with corrupted files. Yes?

When I've been crashing on a project, I backup the project files before relaunching, just in case.

Unless it is crashing at the same time it is writing to disk its unlikely it is corrupting any file. Something in that file could be causing those crashes, though. 

Just saying my experience. I've seen truncated files. Project files I couldn't open. Not in X3, but in the past. And usually around me beating my head against something that was causing a crash.
 
I know I'm not crazy. :-) Well, pretty sure.
 
Cake has all the dump files... sometimes 10 in a row... as I try to learn to stop doing the thing I'm doing.