I’ve noticed now that if I have a crash the .cpr file that was last saved might be hours old whereas there are .bak files in the folder which are relatively recent. I seem to recall that in Cubase 5, 6, 7 etc, having autosave enabled meant that the autosave would occur on the Project file itself. It feels like the mechanism has changed in C9. Am I imagining things?
Some users may be caught out by this potentially.
I suppose it has always been this way – .cpr gets updated when you manually save the project, and autosave function generates .bak files. You must be imagining something.
But when you restart cubase and it tells me something like “ciubase didn’t save before the crash. Will I load the most recent auto save” cubase then loads a project from way back. Poochibg throufh the project folder reveals much more recent .bak files which o then load. But cubase should be loading that most recent file… it’s not doing that however.
That’s how it works, nothing has changed in that regard.
Why shouldnt cubase choose the most recent backup save? A lot of users will not know to look at the times on the other .bak files to make sure Cubase picked the most recent. I saw someone upset on another recent thread that they had lost hours of work after a crash. Myself after a crash on Tuesday last noticed that Cubase loaded up a project that had been saved 4 hours previous whereas there was a .bak file that had been saved 10 minutes before the crash. I simply dont remember having to crosscheck Cubase in this way in version 5-6 7 etc.
As others have said and as far as I remember, the autosave function always created a .bak file.
I’ve been pretty lucky but, the few times I did have Cubase crash on me while working a project I seem to remember getting a notification that Cubase automatically saved the .cpr file with with a suffix of some sort added.
After the crash I would open the .cpr with the suffix, make sure it was working correctly, then go into file explorer and change the name of the original .cpr to something else. Then I would resave the suffixed .cpr with the original .cpr name.
However, I do agree that the name for the “autosave” preference is confusing. Probably should be changed to “autobackup” or something like that. 
Regards 