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PSA: Always back-up everything.

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Joost polycount sponsor
I just wasted 10 hours piecing back together some assets that I accidentally deleted. These assets were already mostly finished and I just had to send them to my client who had already paid for them. I tried to use various tools to recover the lost files but most of them were already corrupt. Luckily UE4 autosaved a decent amount. I only had to spend a few hours piecing everything back together and redoing some blueprints and materials. 

Ironically I usually work in Dropbox but I didn't for this project because that hard drive was almost full.

It was still quite a costly mistake as I wasted 10 hours but I could have easily lost everything and it would have cost me several days to rebuild it all. 

I wouldn't wish this upon anyone so please make sure you have a functional backup system at all times. 
Hard drives can fail or you can make stupid mistakes like I did.  (I won't get into how it happened exactly but Windows messed up something and I have a bad habit of using shift+delete.)

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  • Finalhart
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    Finalhart polycounter lvl 6
    We always use source control for that, the main advantage is that you can always go back to a newer version if you mess up on anything. Unfortunally some files can get very big and wont upload fast. Thank you for reminding me i need to backup some files to my drive tomorrow, cant trust much on hard drives but sometimes you have no choice!
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    Sorry for your loss.
    Put a sticker with Al Lowe's greatest quote "Save early, save often!" on your monitor. Obvious visual reminders can work quite well if your software solutions fail you.
  • kanga
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    kanga quad damage
    Ouch! I feel your pain. A good reminder to all of us.
  • McGreed
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    McGreed polycounter lvl 15
    "Real men don't do back ups ... They cry."

    But yeah, I really need to make some better backups as well, instead of the random ones I do, every time my computer might act weird, or someone post something about (like now). Any recommendations for ways to keep regularly backups on certain folders/files that is located on different locations? Because I don't want to backup my whole harddisk, but only the important parts, however those parts are spread out on different locations.
  • Norron
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    Norron polycounter lvl 13
    Automatically hitting Shift + Delete without looking at what's selected has screwed me a fair number of times. Someday I'll learn maybe.
  • McGreed
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    McGreed polycounter lvl 15
    Shift + Delete not as much... the X, Y, X collapse buttons on the other hand... when only working on one viewport, and then switching to another and sees that half the model is collapsed in one axle. Gotta love autobak files.
  • Joebewon
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    Joebewon polycounter lvl 12
    Aw man, Joost sorry for your loss of time man. 
    I think trying to have a back up somewhere on the internet, plus on a hard drive is always a safe bet.  
    It's just trying to remember to save it and upload it to hard drives and cyberspace.  
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    Autoback saves me from everything but photoshop.

    ;/

    Adobe really needs to get this integrated (although there is a free auto-back script you can run).
  • Deathstick
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    Deathstick polycounter lvl 7
    save as is where the cool kids hangout
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    I am thinking of moving from normal backups to versioned backups with a local P4 setup (OSX or Linux).

    https://www.perforce.com/blog/140228/run-p4d-website-raspberry-pi


  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    If you want a revision control system, Mercurial doesn't even need a server (in comparison to P4), which makes it very convenient. Although, you can also add a server on top, or you can even use Dropbox with it! Download TortoiseHG. Saving your work is as little typing as > hg addremove > hg commit.
    Sticking with P4 gives you the advantage of being able to learn the industry standard though.
  • Bek
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    Bek interpolator
    Interesting, a raspberry pie + external hdd could be a pretty nifty and cheap backup system. Ages ago I had a linux box set to run an rsync script on boot that would copy across new changes to files in certain directories, which was simple and fast. Software like Bacula might be worth looking into as well but it's probably overkill for personal use.
  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    Ya for everyone reading this Dropbox Pro is awesome for portfolio pieces/contract stuff. 1TB is I think $8 a month. Backups happen as soon as there is a change in the file, and there is file history/revision backups (version control). 
  • Bek
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    Bek interpolator
    Do revisions last forever on dropbox pro? I notice with their free service they seem to expire - files I haven't touched in awhile have no previous versions.
  • oglu
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    oglu polycount lvl 666
    Norron said:
    Automatically hitting Shift + Delete without looking at what's selected has screwed me a fair number of times. Someday I'll learn maybe.
    same here...
  • CheeseOnToast
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    CheeseOnToast greentooth
    Dropbox pro keeps all revisions for up to 30 days. You can pay for an additional service which extends that to a year.
  • Eric Chadwick
    I can't recommend CrashPlan enough for this. Saved my ass a few times.

    It's always backing up my files, both to a local HDD and to the cloud. Easy restore, my own encryption key, unlimited versioning, never deletes backup files, etc. Set it and forget it.

    It's free if you don't backup to their cloud. That would be fine if it was just one PC, but for me it's worth $12.50/mo to backup a bunch of PCs, and to use a combo of local and cloud. Some things are well worth paying for, IMHO.

    I did end up upgrading my ISP from cable (4mbps up) to fiber (15mbps up) to handle the extra load. But the load is there anyhow for any continuous online backup, like Dropbox. Same monthly ISP cost anyhow.
  • xvampire
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    xvampire polycounter lvl 14
    im using  WDmycloud.  ( offline cloud ) 
    its a meh performance/speed, not compatible with SVN ( or really hard to setup), but at least it saved me more than once. 

    I used experimental tool in UE , and i paid the consequences >_> ...  i reverted back to 5 days ago. ( only for the scene file)  
    gladly i separated my scene by level streaming.

    some people using drobo  more expensive but better .

  • iadagraca
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    iadagraca polycounter lvl 5
    Autoback saves me from everything but photoshop.

    ;/

    Adobe really needs to get this integrated (although there is a free auto-back script you can run).
    One thing i enabled in photoshop is enabling creating snapshots every time you hit save. Helped me a ton of times where i made major mistakes. you'll find the setting under "history options" in the history tab menu.

    I once had a case where my photoshop file got corrupted while i was working on it, dropbox saved me there though! Saved me for most issues.
  • mats effect
    Yep a 1TB dropbox is soooo worth having. Carbonite is also good for online back up, its not as instant as dropbox but it does all the files on your internal hard drives. 
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Yep a 1TB dropbox is soooo worth having. Carbonite is also good for online back up, its not as instant as dropbox but it does all the files on your internal hard drives. 
    I learned that Google offers free 1TB Google Drive Storage if you write reviews, answer questions, or upload photos for a total of 200 times with their local guides program. I already like to write reviews and had a decent number of points to start with, don't mind doing a bit of work to save $10 a month. 

    Still $2 a moth for 100 GB on Google Drive is a great deal, OneDrive offers Office 365 Personal w/ 1TB of storage for $7 a month, kinda the best deal for a TB out of any of the big services. 
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