Update to 5.1.2f1 from 5.0.1 - Deleted All My Projects

I am really angry right now. I went to https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.1.1 to update my Unity Personal software to 5.1.2 (before it was 5.0.1). When I clicked "Update Now" on the page and then went through all the downloading, etc., it made another Unity application, and also updated my current Unity application - both of them are 5.1.2. And also, IT DELETED ALL MY PROJECT FILES. THERE WERE GAMES THAT I'VE BEEN WORKING ON FOR HOURS! All gone. I looked in my trash bin - gone. Is there a way to get them back?!

 

Whole hours? That's, like, hours worth of work!

Were your project files saved in the same directory as your installation? If so, I imagine it's quite standard when updating an application that the entire install directory would be wiped. Unless you have a backup of your system from before you updated, I'd think those files are gone for good.

On the plus side, hours is more or less nothing. When you've been working on a project for years, now that's a loss. Then again, if you've been working on something for years and don't have it in an online repository or at the very least occasionally backed up to a hard drive that gets locked in a fire-proof safe, you're kind of asking for it...

 

If you're on Windows you could try a system restore and see if your files re-appear.

 

So there's no way to get it back? At all? They didn't even warn me that the Unity files with all my projects would be updated - it just said that the application itself would be updated to run 5.1.2.

Sigh.. thanks though I'm depressed

 

I'm on Mac =/ Is there anyway to restore files on the mac?

 

If you stored your project inside the actual Unity folder then that's just wrong. Don't do it. Put it somewhere safe like a dedicated Work folder.

I've worked with Unity mostly daily for 5 years and this hasn't happened to me yet, so I can only assume you're just generally being a bit confused here. Where did you save the project originally? Have you looked in your documents folder?

Ranting or being upset won't speed up help, but clearly communicating will.

First step is telling us exactly where your project was stored before.

 

lol. Yeah I stored it in in the Unity folder - since when you create a project, it originally goes there. Well, now I know that I should always put it somewhere else

Thanks.

 

Alright be safe. I recommend a nice version control like Perforce (free for 20 users) or SVN (free but can be tricky on macs) - or even github. There's lots of options but these let you screw up badly

 

I was thinking that instead of updating the whole Unity folder, it would go inside the Unity folder and only update the actual Unity application. Ugh I'm sad, cuz I've been working on it for a really long time... All the animations took a while.
I had a multiplayer server running for it. You could play multiplayer on it and all. So since that was deleted it's a huge loss. I'm gonna have to watch through all the tutorials again and re-get the code for it.

Any new multiplayer game ideas?

 

Lol, okay thanks

 

Also - because it was deleted: is there any way AT ALL of getting them back? I looked in my Trash Bin and it wasn't there

 

The default is your user folder.

Use Time Machine. There's no way you should be using a computer without some kind of backup, if you care about your content at all.

--Eric

 

Does this also mean that all my code was deleted too?

 

I have my latest built version of the game... can I use that somehow to get back the Unity project file?

 

Backup=backup=backup=backup
never to many backup

 

Lol yeah

 

Git is very easy to learn and integrates well with Unity. I use that plus Bitbucket for managing the repos. Learning it now and getting into good habits will save you future heartaches.

Forget about your lost files. They're gone. Take it as a lesson learned and start fresh. Repition is good for the soul anyway. If you have to look through tutorials to replicate what you did, you didn't really learn it anyway. So use this second go through to absorb what you're doing and think beyond the copying and pasting.

Everyone makes mistakes like this. Better now than when you're a few months out from release, or have paying customers waiting on you to fix a bug. Learn from it and move on.

 

lol okay, thank you

 

Isn't time machine installed and enabled by default on osx? I honestly don't know, I'm using windows.

Isn't there any data recovery software for osx that could at least have a chance of retrieving some of the files and save some time recreating the project? That was a rhetorical question, I'd be baffled if there was no such thing ^^.


@ExbowFTW: Are you 100% sure that your files are gone and you are not just looking in the wrong place? Have you searched with spotlight (or whatever it's called) and have you manually gone through all the folders with finder? Or is just the Unity starting screen not showing your projects anymore?

 

Yep I manually went through all my files

Well, yes it is always there on OSX. However, Time Machine wasn't activated at that time, meaning that it never read which files were deleted

Thanks for replying

 

You do have to tell it where to back up to first (ideally another hard drive).

--Eric