Abstract: Audit Trail recovery is enhanced by including addresses of immediately prior periodic saves of all active or open Steps or transactions in each new period save area. Reduced cost in main memory usage and on-the-fly processing to accomplish audit trail format that enhances recovery time results from ability to immediately address next prior period save data once a last periodic save is found in reading back the audit trail. Reading back the audit trail to find the last periodic save can be avoided too by directly addressing the last periodic save in preferred embodiments since the computer system will in all events temporarily maintain a record of the address of the last periodic save to record the next time a periodic save is to be made, so this temporarily maintained record can be accessed and used to jump directly to the last periodic save address on the audit trail.