Restore previous version of file

morego

morego

New member
Hi guys, I'm in serious trouble. I was working in a file with several layers, I cutted all except layer 1 to paste all them togheter into the place of layer 1.

I saved and closed the file... everything so fast, keyboard shortcuts, I've got two screens. I was probably looking at the other screen and it seems that I did not paste what I cutted.

Now I've got only the part of the model that was in the layer 1, but I've lost the rest of layers!!! total panic... I've not saved over again and did no turn off the computer.

...is anything I can do? ****, it was weeks of work :(

LW 2015 in Windows 11 - The file I was working is stored in a WesternDigital external hard drive.
 
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I'm afraid you may have lost your work, unless you saved incremental versions or created earlier (automated?) backups.

You might try an undelete app like http://kickassundelete.sourceforge.net/ to check if an old version is still saved on the drive, but probably not because you saved over the same file.

I have to ask: in all those weeks of work, you never saved an incremental version? Or created backups of your work at the very least? Because that is asking for situations like yours to arise.

To prevent a similar situation in the future: always ALWAYS save incremental versions. NEVER keep working with one singular file, because it is just asking for trouble and is too fragile a workflow. A file can be corrupted and people make mistakes and lose part of their work (as you are experiencing now).

I always save a new version whenever I hit a small milestone. I may have tenths of versions, but it ensures I never lose any work, and I can return to any state. Aside from that I use a free Windows utility to mirror my project to another drive AND automatically do versioning for me (just in case the work drive fails on me).

I hope you'll be able to retrieve your work. At the very least it is a tough lesson as to how to manage and backup your files. We have all been where you are now! It sucks, though.
 
Rayek said:
I have to ask: in all those weeks of work, you never saved an incremental version? Or created backups of your work at the very least? Because that is asking for situations like yours to arise.
Click to expand...

yes, that is asking for trouble.
B8QSFA7.gif

Always!! save every day with different a filename.

and backup to external drives at Least every week.

what if your whole Harddisk collapsed ??!

 
erikals said:
nice, didn't know...

Click to expand...
In 2011, lightning struck in our company building, and it´s protection for such event in the building was just poor, consequently after two strikes, two computers failed to startup.
Fortunately I had made backups on pretty much all the day before, but it was manually with the built in windows tools at that time, full system backup on to external drives, everything was then rebooted from a cd boot disk, then it located all the files from the external drives, we later used a backup service online that does daily backups.

I Saved computers at home as well with that simple backup utility, have to check this one though, this seems not to be the same, or perhaps just a file history backup and not a full system backup.
You can either choose to set restoration points, and you can make a system disc with just the system start up, or a full system recovery including all your software installed and all your documents.
 
Rayek said:
I'm afraid you may have lost your work, unless you saved incremental versions or created earlier (automated?) backups.

You might try an undelete app like http://kickassundelete.sourceforge.net/ to check if an old version is still saved on the drive, but probably not because you saved over the same file.

I have to ask: in all those weeks of work, you never saved an incremental version? Or created backups of your work at the very least? Because that is asking for situations like yours to arise.

To prevent a similar situation in the future: always ALWAYS save incremental versions. NEVER keep working with one singular file, because it is just asking for trouble and is too fragile a workflow. A file can be corrupted and people make mistakes and lose part of their work (as you are experiencing now).

I always save a new version whenever I hit a small milestone. I may have tenths of versions, but it ensures I never lose any work, and I can return to any state. Aside from that I use a free Windows utility to mirror my project to another drive AND automatically do versioning for me (just in case the work drive fails on me).

I hope you'll be able to retrieve your work. At the very least it is a tough lesson as to how to manage and backup your files. We have all been where you are now! It sucks, though.
Click to expand...
Thanks Rayek, it was hard, first time this thing happens to me. I tried your app but unfortunatelly it wasn't even able to red the drive (it seems it only reads NTFS format).

I found DiskDrill (it seems to be the most accalimed in forums and comparisson charts, also with a free version limited to 500Mb). It was able to recover a version on a few weeks ago, cause I saved with different name and deleted the old one. As you say, it is easier for these apps to recover deleted files than previous versions of same file.

Well, not all is lost and the leason is learned! Will save as incremental versions from today and will check any backup utility.
 
raymondtrace said:
Are you using Windows File History to automatically save versions of your files? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-5de0e203-ebae-05ab-db85-d5aa0a199255

Were you using an incremental save plugin? https://www.lightwave3d.com/assets/plugins/contains/increment/
Click to expand...
Thanks Raymond, I'll check how to config the backup carefully but by the way I've just installed the incremental save plugin and have to say that it's definitelly a must, I don't know why I didn't hear about this before.
 
prometheus said:
In 2011, lightning struck in our company building, and it´s protection for such event in the building was just poor, consequently after two strikes, two computers failed to startup.
Fortunately I had made backups on pretty much all the day before, but it was manually with the built in windows tools at that time, full system backup on to external drives, everything was then rebooted from a cd boot disk, then it located all the files from the external drives, we later used a backup service online that does daily backups.

I Saved computers at home as well with that simple backup utility, have to check this one though, this seems not to be the same, or perhaps just a file history backup and not a full system backup.
You can either choose to set restoration points, and you can make a system disc with just the system start up, or a full system recovery including all your software installed and all your documents.
Click to expand...
I never care about that before but yeah, it's so important. I'll check those ideas and will go with one pretty soon for sure.
 
morego said:
Well, not all is lost and the leason is learned! Will save as incremental versions from today and will check any backup utility.
Click to expand...
It could have been worse. Far worse. Like accidentally deleting your only and primary backup 90% of your past work client and personal files worth 2 decades of sweat and tears.

That's what happened to me back in my thirties when I migrated between computers.

As you can imagine, I was not amused...
 
PS
raymondtrace said:
Are you using Windows File History to automatically save versions of your files? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-5de0e203-ebae-05ab-db85-d5aa0a199255

Were you using an incremental save plugin? https://www.lightwave3d.com/assets/plugins/contains/increment/
Click to expand...
Nice - was not aware of that option.

*edit*
According to the manual page:
File History only backs up copies of files that are in the Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos, and Desktop folders and the OneDrive files available offline on your PC. If you have files or folders elsewhere that you want backed up, you can add them to one of these folders.
Click to expand...

So that rather limits the usefulness to me. I never work in those folders, and I do not plan on ever doing that. What a shame.

------
I prefer to use Dsynchronize, though.

The GUI might look cluttered, but it is the smallest and most controllable automated backup/versioning tool that I could find. Super small file size and no need to install anything.
 
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Rayek said:
It could have been worse. Far worse. Like accidentally deleting your only and primary backup 90% of your past work client and personal files worth 2 decades of sweat and tears.

That's what happened to me back in my thirties when I migrated between computers.

As you can imagine, I was not amused...
Click to expand...
Wow! seriously!!?? I'm so sorry... f***ng computers!
 
@morego It was truly and honestly my own damn fault - somehow I quick formatted the one hard drive with the backup, which I planned to undelete. Quick formatting only writes a new file index, so all the files are still intact. But then I did something entirely backwards: the next day I was rushing out of the door to work and I needed to create a copy of a bunch of DVDs of media files.

In my haste I copied those to the first drive I found that had space on it: you guessed right, the hard drive that had my files backup on it which I still needed to undelete.

SO stupid on my part! As you can imagine, it took a few days to accept that I had lost all those files and projects.

So that little incident made me paranoid about backing up my files properly... ;-)
 
Oh, and perfect storm: two weeks before getting the new machine, the drive with my secondary backup experienced a hard error, and crashed. The drive made an interesting and pretty awful noise.

So I thought I was pretty safe with two backup drives!

It was "a series of unfortunate events".
 

this is why i considered the new BluRay backup.

they made a 100GB special edition.
i haven't totally excluded that thought just yet.

it will never crash like a harddrive.

BD-XL 100GB.png

 
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erikals said:
this is why i considered the new BluRay backup.

they made a 100GB special edition.
i haven't totally excluded that thought just yet.

it will never crash like a harddrive.

View attachment 153732
Click to expand...
Rewritable how many times?
100 gigs seems like nothing to me in terms of what is needed to store.
If you have two external drives, what are the odds both would crash at the same time?
Besides, you may experience reading issues and writing to those disc by far more often I believe than external harddrives.
And..aren´t you paying much more in price per GB with CD/DVD discs?
 
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morego said:
Thanks Rayek, it was hard, first time this thing happens to me. I tried your app but unfortunatelly it wasn't even able to red the drive (it seems it only reads NTFS format).

I found DiskDrill (it seems to be the most accalimed in forums and comparisson charts, also with a free version limited to 500Mb). It was able to recover a version on a few weeks ago, cause I saved with different name and deleted the old one. As you say, it is easier for these apps to recover deleted files than previous versions of same file.

Well, not all is lost and the leason is learned! Will save as incremental versions from today and will check any backup utility.
Click to expand...
I used Stellar Recovery many years ago on a disc that couldn´t be initiallized or recognized at all through windows, it failed to access it, but running stellar Recover on it, and voila it could recognize it, not sure how I started it up ..if it was in some command line or something and I do not have it now, but with stellar recovery..I could save all the files mostly, even though windows itself couldn´t find the harddrive as accessable, apart from a smaller corrupted part I believe, and copy all files a a new drive.

Recuva is free to use... which you also can try to run through that LW folder of yours..
But again, if that sector has been overwritten, theres not much you can do..
Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free! (ccleaner.com)
 

100 gigs seems like nothing to me in terms of what is needed to store.
Click to expand...

might be nothing to you, but might be enough for backing up "essentials"
bcwLfNX.gif


an SSD is also a good alternative for backing up "essentials"

5O6mwtQ.png


 
erikals said:
might be nothing to you, but might be enough for backing up "essentials"
bcwLfNX.gif


an SSD is also a good alternative for backing up "essentials"

5O6mwtQ.png
Click to expand...
Yeah, It is of course individual.
Yep..SSD, should last longer without the moving parts, it should be faster as well, but of course..in these times, much more expensive.

I have my external seagate drives, maybe around 8-10 now, and a few other smaller ones at 2 and 4 terrabyte as well, but usually always buying 8Terrabytes now, and a double backup on to them, what I still not have in place is out of this house online backups, in case of fire etc, I have to look in to that for some Very Very crucial or valuable data, there are some free alternatives you could use, if that data isn´t that huge.

A portable 2TB ssd is around 2290 sek right now on one store, but there is most likely much cheaper offers over here somewhere, I have to check, while an 8TB external seagate could be around 2400 sek, well ..around that price range when I find special prices on them.
 
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