@JonR Hi. Sorry to hear about your issue. While there are special cases where Pencil2D project files (PCLX) can become corrupted (interrupting the save procedure, blackouts, etc), AFAIK it’s not possible for the software to completely erase dozens of projects randomly. There are a few possible explanations however if you’re using Windows10:
- The files are still in the computer, however they are not accessible from the current Pencil2D interface because the settings were reset. For this I recommend making an exhaustive search by using the
*.pclxand*.pclsearch keyword filters in your C:\ drive - The crash you experienced was so severe that Windows automatically sent you to a restore point where you didn’t have your Pencil2D files copied.
- The files were deleted by Windows after a recent update as in this case (yes this also happens
) https://www.howtogeek.com/658194/windows-10s-new-update-is-deleting-peoples-files-again/
We certainly have this updated guide Pencil2D Project File Corruption Prevention / Partial Recovery Guide on how to recover files, where you can see prevention tips practiced BEFORE a file is even saved as well as actions you can take AFTER the files are corrupted or “lost”.
Looking in the %TEMP% folder is a first hand technique for recovering projects that you were working at the moment of the crash, no other projects that were closed previously on days before will be found there, only the one that crashed or were not properly closed in the editor.
But everything I’ve done in Pencil2D over the last week - all the latest pclx files - has disappeared.
You can try the final section of the guide and use a third party recovery software. Usually files deleted by normal means will linger on the hard drive data surface for a while.
Note that RECUVA is suggested but not endorsed, as there might be better free options out there but I personally don’t know any with a decent % of success. Of course when using these kind of software time is of essence as your hard drive will be actively allowing your OS and other apps to overwrite deleted files so at some point they will truly be unrecoverable.
I’m not working professionally, but this is still damned annoying. I wasn’t aware that this kind of thing was a possibility - I don’t recall warning messages before downloading and installing.
I’ll be really honest with you. This happens all the time with any software, even commercial ones, unfortunately. I work professionally and recently I had to use Adobe Animate CC 2020 and 2021 enterprise edition ($$$). Suffice to say that me and a crew of other 10 people experienced multiple daily crashes on various platforms (both macOSX and Windows10).
We even lost work (unrecoverable) on a very difficult deadline before christmas eve that could have costed us a fine from the client due to contract clauses. This also has happened to me personally with Autodesk Maya, and Toonboom Harmony, which are by no means “simple” software packages like Pencil2D.
So this is more of a general tip: never save thrice on the same file. Always make extra backup files you can fall back to, so if one corrupts or gets deleted, you can prevail. Also consider using a file versioning system either on a distributed free service like github.com or using your own OS file versioning system (this is also mentioned in the guide above)