In the past, you must have project saved once in Origin and then if it's dirty, every 12 minutes (by default), the project will be autosaved in case Origin crashes. But sometimes user started a new project and had never saved it. Then Origin didn't autosave it at all and if Origin crashed, there was no autosave. 

Note: If Origin is closed normally, no autosave will be kept since Origin always prompt user to save.