Lost the Scene file

Hello, Today I opened my project as usual and I had an empty scene, the main scene didnt load, I also cant find it using the inspector search. So I went to my backup projects to recover the main scene (had like 2 months of this project copies on my external HD) and I noticed that there are not any saved main scene on any of the backup projects from the last 2 months.

Is it possible that the main scene was stored in another folder or something? or how can I locate the scene?

 

You could try searching your project drive / folder using *.unity. You may be able to locate the required scene file by name or date.

 

Thank you for your anwser. I cant find any scene file... The project is using the 2019.2.1f1 version. Did they change the saved scenes type or something? Its weird that even the backup files dosnt have the scene because I have been working on this project for a long time without problems.

 

If the project crashed, it may have corrupted the scene file.

If editor remains open, it may be possible to recover the scene from the project 'Temp/__Backupscenes' folder. This is where Unity creates a copy of your scene when you press 'Play', but it is deleted when you quit the editor.

Sadly, it seems probable that your scenes have been lost, despite the fact that you've taken the time to create backup copies. Do you regularly save your scenes during development ?

Hopefully, somebody will come up with a solution, but I think it's rather unlikely.

 

@Arkshija have you used Git or some other version control app that might have saved that file?

You can't save Unity scene files outside the project folder, Unity will open a popup which says "The scene needs to be saved inside the Assets folder of your project" so it's really weird if you have somehow managed to misplace your file for months. I think you might be able to do that symbolic links (if you set up it in windows), not sure though.

 

This is a long shot, but you could try downloading the free version of 'Recuva' from Pirifom. Making sure you deselect the option(s) to install any additional software you don't require.

Download
Recuva Download

Once installed enter *.unity into the 'Filename or Path' filter box, select the related drive and click 'Scan'. I've just tested it and it did find a deleted scene file (which in my case was non-recoverable as it had been overwritten), but you never know.

 

And for the future, I'd add SyncBack (there's a free version) to the toolset, or some other backup tool that allows you to schedule backups. But I think you might already have had one in operation as you had backups.

Also I'd suggest that if you take backups with tools like SyncBack free or use 7zip or WinRAR, close Unity so that you don't have any files locked that might get skipped by the app you use to make the backup. Some of the pro backup apps do use volume shadow copy which allows them to copy locked files.

 

But I've been copying the project folder to my backup USB hard drive for months and the scene file is not there. Thats the weird part. Copied everything but the scene file is weird.

 

Did you already try to search everywhere on your computer? Every drive and folder? In desperate situation better check everywhere.

 

Saving scenes is separate than saving the project. When you first save the scene it should ask you what filename and location. It should be at that location in any backup if you had done so.

 

you can go to "File>Open Recent Scenes " you can find your scene there