Can't open the project

[PsychoJack]

Hey so I tried to open the project, but what I got instead was the message.
''Unable to read Actor.json"
The weird part is I checked the data file and the JSON file was still there.
What did I do wrong?

 

[bgillisp]

The file is corrupted. You need to load a backup of your project to fix it properly.

You DO have a backup, right?

 

[PsychoJack]

The file is corrupted. You need to load a backup of your project to fix it properly.

You DO have a backup, right?

Backup? Like a second file

 

[bgillisp]

Yep. You should always make a backup of your project from time to time, just in case.

 

[PsychoJack]

Yep. You should always make a backup of your project from time to time, just in case.

No I did not! Guess I have to restart the whole project from scratch again.

 

[bgillisp]

Maybe maybe not. You *might* get away with copying the actor.json from a new project, but your old actors database will be lost for good no matter what if you do that. But maybe you can recover the rest.

I'd still back up what you got before trying any of this though.

 

[PsychoJack]

Maybe maybe not. You *might* get away with copying the actor.json from a new project, but your old actors database will be lost for good no matter what if you do that. But maybe you can recover the rest.

I'd still back up what you got before trying any of this though.

I tried that, turns out the whole thing was corrupted. So I had to delete it.

 

[Andar]

in that case you need to find out WHY it was corrupted.
Files don't get destroyed like that without reason, and if you don't find the reason and fix it that WILL repeat again and again, destroying your work each time.

Possible causes are:
1) power failure
2) Harddrive defective or near end of life
3) project stored in a cloud-sync'ed folder
4) virus
5) damaged window
6) background program interfering with saves

 

[PsychoJack]

in that case you need to find out WHY it was corrupted.
Files don't get destroyed like that without reason, and if you don't find the reason and fix it that WILL repeat again and again, destroying your work each time.

Possible causes are:
1) power failure
2) Harddrive defective or near end of life
3) project stored in a cloud-sync'ed folder
4) virus
5) damaged window
6) background program interfering with saves

I know why it happens and I can't do anything about it. It's because my backup drive has a clunky aux cord where the slightest bit of pressure will cause it to disconnect.

 

[Andar]

well - that's better as if you didn't know the cause. But in that case you should always make backups of everything.

and I suggest checking the drive settings. If it is an external USB drive, then windows should have an option to optimize it for "hot-swapping". That will not prevent the power failure or save everything, but it will reduce the chance of file failure on power failure (again not perfect, but better than nothing.

The cost of that option is a slowdown of the HDD speed/use as that basically tells windows to disable the HDD-chaching and save everything physically as soon as possible...