Soo.. all my files just randomly disappeared.

[Riddler]

I was on Vam earlier today then closed it to work on something else. Everything was fine. While working, I went to my addon packages folder a few times to look at the contents of a couple .var files using 7zip, then went back to work. Just now when I went to open Vam again I found everything had dissapeared except the addon packages and custom folders. My addon packages folder is completely empty except for the two files I checked earlier and the custom folder has one file in it called .DS_Store. I don't know if this is necessarily a Vam problem but does anybody know what the heck could have happened?

 

[DTB247]

Wow, I would check recycle bin , check folder properties / security settings make sure read write modify are still checked , maybe search hard drive for missing file names . Good luck

 

[TToby]

This is one of the things that I would call "simply impossible" ... if I wouldn't have learned in my long life with computers, that literally nothing is impossible.
You don't want to hear this, but 90% of the time it was a user failure. So please check double and threefold if you didn't have done something like opened up the wrong folders, moved everything unintentionally, maybe deleted it or hide it. The left over 10% are some very severe things like a computer virus or a drive-error.
Good luck!

 

[DJ]

Do you have two instalations of vam? i have one with everything, and a "clean" version with no add-on content. The time I thought I'd lost all my content I'd just opened the wrong one.

 

[TToby]

Same for me, one folder/installation for the benchmark, starting in some seconds only, and one folder/installation with all my stuff. After mistakenly starting the wrong one several times, I renamed the folder and shortcut to a foolproved name. This would surely be the most simple explanation. Good Luck!

 

[Riddler]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. I have no idea what happened. I only had one installation and it was gone entirely. Even the updater. I just redownloaded it. I know it was probably something I did but I don't understand what I could have done to make all but three random files disappear lol. They weren't in the recycle bin and my ssd is about 100 gigs lighter. Oh well.. thanks again!

 

[Acid Bubbles]

The most obvious explanation would be an accidental drag&drop of the folder, the AddonPackages would have stayed there because it was opened in 7zip. Anyway if this is a possibility, check out "Everything" by voidtools, and search for VaM.exe. If it's somewhere, this'll find it.

 

[TToby]

It is nevertheless a mystery. 100GB is quite a number. To delete them or copy them would last at least some minutes with a fat system message. I doubt this could have been happened completely unseen. Drag and drop on the same drive would be much faster like AB said, but if it was the case, why is the SSD 100GB lighter now? The recycling bin is empty, too. Very strange. Searching for VaM.exe would be a good first-aid idea. If this doesn't help, I would suggest to use a file recovery tool to deep-search the drive for deleted files... at least to understand what happened. Please avoid to install or copy new files to the SSD if possible, or the deleted files might be overwritten.
The only last thing I could imagine aside from the obvious explanations above and a potentially virus/hacking attack, would maybe be a SSD error... but why only the VaM files are lost? Even if this is unlikely I would nevertheless suggest a drive health scan. In theory those drives can fail at some memory blocks and files are not as fragmented as on HDDs. But I still hope for a much more simple explanation.

 

[Riddler]

It is nevertheless a mystery. 100GB is quite a number. To delete them or copy them would last at least some minutes with a fat system message. I doubt this could have been happened completely unseen. Drag and drop on the same drive would be much faster like AB said, but if it was the case, why is the SSD 100GB lighter now? The recycling bin is empty, too. Very strange. Searching for VaM.exe would be a good first-aid idea. If this doesn't help, I would suggest to use a file recovery tool to deep-search the drive for deleted files... at least to understand what happened. Please avoid to install or copy new files to the SSD if possible, or the deleted files might be overwritten.
The only last thing I could imagine aside from the obvious explanations above and a potentially virus/hacking attack, would maybe be a SSD error... but why only the VaM files are lost? Even if this is unlikely I would nevertheless suggest a drive health scan. In theory those drives can fail at some memory blocks and files are not as fragmented as on HDDs. But I still hope for a much more simple explanation.

Ya that's what's so confusing. If I had tried to delete them , it would have taken some time and I would have had to make more than one click. Same thing with moving them. Yet they're just gone. I don't see how it's possible lol I'll run a health scan. Everything else SEEMS fine.

 

[KajaGoo]

I remember, earlier this year there were some malicious VARS being distributed on some torrents / forums. Inside those VARS there were some script entries (for example "FileManagerSecure.DeleteFile") that would delete all contents of VAM folder upon loading a scene.

But since then VAM has been updated and there have been no reports of this behaviour.

 

[Timelord_1691]

Hmm Same sort of thing happened to me, only I think it is because my PC crashed, so my PC black screened and fans went full speed. I had to hard shutdown but when I rebooted and launched VAM, 500 of my addonpackages were missing and just some random scattered files between morphs, assets etc. Very weird how not all were gone but I assume that is because it crashed mid session for me and maybe deleted all referenced dependencies

 

[SPQR]

I assume that is because it crashed mid session for me and maybe deleted all referenced dependencies

what you described about black screen & fans sounds like a graphic cards failure but i'm no expert. you can open up Event Viewer in windows > windows log > system and go to that time, you should find an Error that will give you more details what happened.

but anyway files shouldn't get deleted on crashes, there's nothing even writing to them so they can't go corrupt. Maybe your hdd is failing due to the crash. are you missing other stuff too or just vam? also, do you happen to use vars from other sources other than the hub?

 

[Timelord_1691]

Just vam items seems to be missing, it looks like HDD failure after checking event viewer there were logs of imminent disk failure, and I mostly have HUB hosted stuff, but also do download mega files also now and then. But I usually run a disk check pretty often, and even now it says my drive is all good, I have checked the physical connection and all seems to be connected fine.

 

[SPQR]

you should backup anything important from that drive. and replace it. it's only gonna get worse

diskcheck is not gonna help, it's likely what deleted them lol if you did a diskcheck on reboot after the crash and it threw some message about lost allocation files

 

[Timelord_1691]

Conveniently enough I already have another HDD on the way anyway, bit annoying but oh well.

 

[velveltia]

Same for me.
After updating to 1.22, I started it up and after a long wait my computer crashed.
When I booted up, AddonPackages was empty.
Fortunately I had made a backup before working on it, so not a problem, but surprised.

 

[Matt_]

Same for me.
After updating to 1.22, I started it up and after a long wait my computer crashed.
When I booted up, AddonPackages was empty.
Fortunately I had made a backup before working on it, so not a problem, but surprised.

Is it a key issue, does it say free on the opening screen or creator

 

[Toonen1988]

Computer usually never delete files on their own. It could be indeed a user failure or there is something wrong with your storage. Maybe download some software to check your HDD/SSD health status.

If you are 100% sure it wasn't a user fail and the HDD/SSD are completely fine, then it could be a script that deleted all your files.

Even though they brought out a security update for VaM, it isn't impossible that someone put again a new script online that deleted all your files.

I'm getting paranoid of these kind of conversations. I already have VaM on a external SSD, time to make a second backup on a different external drive and maybe make a cloud backup of all my characters.

100gb can't dissappear out of nowhere, something gave the command to delete it, or your computer storage has failures.