Hard Drive Tragedy

[BigToastie]

Well, just so people know, make sure your RPG games are backed up regularly!


Had a hard drive failure and lost a few days worth of progress (including a huge plugin move I had done)


Luckily I have a backup run every weekend run to an external FTP so at least I have the game from that point, but please guys make sure your games are backed up, I would've been devastated if I lost my entire game (I am heartbroken I've lost a few days work!) just saying, make sure you guys backup, I wouldn't want anyone to lose their hardwork!

 

[Todeswalzer]

Been there... once I lost 3 years of game coding when my 2TB drive "exploded" and I had no backup 

 

[Andar]

There is a reason why my starting point tutorial also mentiones backups as a point of it...


I only wish that more new users would really read and work through it...

 

[Seriel]

Yep!
I lost my entire project not so long ago because my laptop died.


Also my first ever project died due to a BSOD corrupting the project data.


And before you give me the backup lecture, with the most recent one I was sure I had the files backed up. But when i went to recover the backup I couldn't find it anywhere!


And the first time I never actually made any backups lol.


*casually backs up his project*

 

[BigToastie]

Yeah I am going to do a daily backup now, especially if I have done a lot of work, I didn't think as I was like "oh it'll back up this weekend" I just want to let people know, it can't be said enough. back everything up please!!


I know what I need to do, to sort it all out to get to the point to where it was, but it's wasting time that I could be doing new content rather than redoing the same content

 

[Hudell]

Yep!
I lost my entire project not so long ago because my laptop died.


Also my first ever project died due to a BSOD corrupting the project data.


And before you give me the backup lecture, with the most recent one I was sure I had the files backed up. But when i went to recover the backup I couldn't find it anywhere!


And the first time I never actually made any backups lol.


*casually backs up his project*

This happens more often than not, even on big companies with very important data. They make a backup, but never bother to test it. Sometimes their backups are useless, other times the backup system fails for some reason and people never realize things aren't being backed up anymore.


For my game I have a git server and I commit every change as soon as they are done, if I ever lost my computer, it's unlikely I would lose more than 2 or 3 hours of work. I also pull the project data in another computer every once in a while to protect against a double tragedy. Other than backup, I also have a detailed history of everything I changed and the ability to let other people work on my project without the need to take care of which files each one modified.

 

[bgillisp]

And this topic is why I added what I call backup day to my schedule, where I back up the project in full at the end of that day. Probably should honestly back it up more, but since I usually only have one day to work on the game hard per week, it works out well, as the backup is right after that day.

 

[AceOfAces_Mod]

Man, I remember my laptop's original hard drive failing me as I was re-installing Windows 8.1 for the n-th time on the same hdd. I almost lost all of my project files if I had not enabled Steam Cloud and moved the files to OneDrive. Now that I have a network attached hard drive, I can keep my files there for safety, along a copy on OneDrive.

 

[BigToastie]

Well after some hard work I am back to where I was (worked a fair ooooold bit to get it sorted)


Got my data on my FTP server now (with a mirrored hard drive) so more redundancy, I dont think my heart can take another scare like that!

 

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

I don't have to worry, I literarly have a HDD back up of my RPGmaking archive and I have another one next to it and another back up of the same original one and for emergencies, I have one HDD with all the backups that is barely used and is in a safe.


Am I being too paranoid? Also I am not kidding, I have three back ups of my RPG archive and another one locked up tight that is only used in emergencies.

 

[Hudell]

Am I being too paranoid? Also I am not kidding, I have three back ups of my RPG archive and another one locked up tight that is only used in emergencies.

There's no such thing as too paranoid when talking about backups.

 

[BigToastie]

You can never be too paranoid about your data's safety! 


Just depends how much you value it )

 

[North_Star]

Jesus man, this is devastating. I haven't thought to back my RPG Maker stuff up to be honest, you just don't expect this kind of thing to go wrong, But i will now. Knowing how much time i've put into my game.


Hope everything worked out cool for you.


NorthStar/Deckard.

 

[cekobico]

Am I the only one who put my project folder in Dropbox...?

 

[Seriel]

Am I the only one who put my project folder in Dropbox...?

Nope, i've seen other people do it although i'm not one of them.


I don't do that because I find Dropbox to be unreliable.


At the moment everytime I save a major change i'll upload the changes to my ftp server, which also let's people play the game as it's being made online (yay for mv web playing) and I can live debug the game with other people (like, "ive fixed that issue, save and refresh")


This also results in my game being backed up to the server all the time so if my computer dies I can just pull down the copy stored on the ftp server!

 

[cekobico]

I don't do that because I find Dropbox to be unreliable.

How so?

 

[Seriel]

How so?

Because sometimes it doesn't sync everything and can occassionally corrupt your files.


@Takeo212 had this issue before with a project on Dropbox, where some files were missing from the project, and i've encountered on multiple occasions where it won't sycn everything.


However, if you want to use Dropbox and it works for you, i'm not stopping you.

 

[cekobico]

Because sometimes it doesn't sync everything and can occassionally corrupt your files.


@Takeo212 had this issue before with a project on Dropbox, where some files were missing from the project, and i've encountered on multiple occasions where it won't sycn everything.


However, if you want to use Dropbox and it works for you, i'm not stopping you.

Is he aware of the "Previous version" feature of Dropbox? That include deleted files, also. They won't be visible on your actual Folder in Windows Explorer/Finder but if you open your folder in the web, you can still see those removed files. 

 

[Seriel]

Is he aware of the "Previous version" feature of Dropbox? That include deleted files, also. They won't be visible on your actual Folder in Windows Explorer/Finder but if you open your folder in the web, you can still see those removed files. 

*she


And, if I remember right the files never actually synced in the first place. So they never got online.


However I could be wrong.


I just don't use dropbox just in case. That and the fact that you only get 2GB of space, I have basically unlimited on my ftp server so I prefer to use that, as well as the fact that I can get people to play the game as it's being made.


(I have yet to find a software that automatically syncs a folder with an ftp folder)

 

[Oddball]

can you back up to a flashdrive? or better yet, is it possible to work with it in a flashdrive?


edit: actually i think dropbox could be a good backup if you send an editable copy of the game there