Just finished working on one of my projects and there was some type of glitch… it reported a schematic was already open but it wasn’t…
I close everything but when I went to reopen the project is was missing and so too were all projects in that project sub folder (19 projects)… The individual folders were still there but all files were gone…
Looking through the folder I only see one file called: “WiFi_Test_001.cmp” (the project I was working on, I guess)… Everything is gone… it’s not possible…
I’ve checked recycle bin but no luck… I don’t have hardware issues of any kind and yet months work just disappeared…
Any ideas or help appreciated…
Going to restart and check the drive but I suspect it’s fine… what could have happened?
It’s not apparent what OS you use. For winblows there is something called ntfs-undelete, the apple probably has something similar. Maybe worth checking that out.
Many thanks for the quick rely… I should mention I have a backup for many of the files but nothing for the last few weeks… I also use git and was in the process of adding several projects when this happened… I never got a chance…
I’m running Windows 7… ntfs-undelete didn’t find them (trying deep scan now)… So if not deleted, where did they go or more precisely, how can this happen…
I’ve had kicad (pcbnew) delete a layout file when something went wrong some time ago, but that was just the one file that was open. Fortunately I only lost work of a couple of hours, not everything (I use git and store stuff on github & a private server).
If I read your statement correctly, it seems to have removed everything recursively, which is quite terrible. If this is reproducible with a recent version of kicad, you should definitely file a bug report. If you still use the “old stable” 4022, consider upgrading or using winbuilder. Bug reports against such old version will probably be ignored anyway.
I compiled 5288 and installed it just forgot I had it…It’s working fine… are there any new binaries available or do I have to rebuild for windows?
I’m only finding out exactly what went missing and it’s doing my head in… some of my best work on my main project… Will have to start from scratch and that’s several months work… It wasn’t just the Kicad files, it was all the related files and note and links… a serious amount of stuff… I still can’t believe it…
I have to run ntfs-undelete deep scan again, it found a lot of the usual deleted files but when I added a filter to narrow down the list, it hung… not my day… If it wasn’t for the fact that today I received my new Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope I’d polish off a bottle of whiskey and take to my bed
When I read this I got the feeling that the issue could be caused by almost anything (including or excluding KiCAD). I once drag-'n-dropped a folder by mistake into another folder and did not recognize it. Of course the files were gone but not deleted (did you search your complete hard drive for the files?). It could also be a fault of your hard drive itself or even a virus.
Anyways - I really recommend thinking about a regular (kind of daily) and preferably automatically starting backup solution. I lost to many files for taking backups easily. You could for example store your important files in a Dropbox which includes a simple versioning system. In case the computer dies (e.g. by a fire or lightning strike), the files are still there.
It’s actually not possible to copy the contents of 19 directories to another folder by mistake, only wish it was…
It’s not a virus, that I can guarantee… I’ve worked with computers for thirty years (more or less), I actually know what I am doing most of the time
For backup (which is automated) I backup my system files only weekly… Every few months I do a drive copy so in the even of failure, I can be up and running in minutes… I also back up random folders from time to time… I’ve still got all my source code from the 80’s… I loose nothing except these files and I haven’t given up finding them yet…
It’s not the end of the world but the missing files were at a stage where I was going to add them to my git repositories within days… they related to these projects: https://hackaday.io/projects/hacker/31514 … I’ve started over…
Mike
I said “system files” that is the windows operating system (reinstalling and reactivating is a major pain)…
As it turns out I had shadow copy enabled so I found a two day old copy of the missing files. I’ve recovered most of them, just lost the files edited over a two day period… still it’s strange how this happened and I just wanted to draw attention to it… lesson learned…
I’ve never heard of something like this, but that sure doesn’t help when you’re pulling your hair out. One workaround in the future is to work inside a Dropbox folder. That has saved my skin once or twice, but not everyone likes doing that.
