Unity Hub - warning regarding updates and project files!

Unity Courses Ask
#1

Just updated Unity Hub and, well, it deleted all my project files! After some googling, this seems to be a known problem (often dismissed under the category of “newbie should have known better”).

The issue is: if you save your projects under a folder that Unity Hub has its hands on, when updating it clears that folder. I was a bit surprised as I had created a ./unity/projects folder and a ./unity/unityhub folder, and it still cleared out my projects folder.

So, projects should be saved somewhere far from the reach of Unity Hub.

Since I’m still more or less a programming newbie, it seems that the repos I had built in the 3d course projects were actually in the same folder–so they are gone as well. I had been planning to start backing up the projects but kept putting it off (“ahhh, they’re just reskinned clones of the tutorial, I’ll do it later”).

Really a shame, as I’d finished the entire 2d course and the first couple of projects on the 3d course.

Fortunately, I hadn’t strayed too terribly far from the projects–so I’m glad I’ve learned this lesson before striking out too far on my own. But I’ll certainly miss my helicopter cat in my Glitch Garden implementation. :’(

Also a great reason not to be lazy about uploading builds to the forum in the future :wink:

Anyhow–I’d suggest tossing in a warning about this when you guys have time!

I’d also like to say: cheers for the excellent courses. I love the spiral syllabi you employ–it’s very satisfying to watch my skillset grow. I’m sure I’ll be picking up a few more in your catalogue!

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#2

Hi Tom,

I’m sorry to hear that you lost your projects. Where exactly is this ./unity/ folder? Inside the installation folder of Unity or UnityHub? Is there a reason why you didn’t save the projects in a folder like Rick showed it in the video where he created his first project in the course? Since this is the first time I read about this problem, I’d like to get more information on what you did and why you did it.

You can download all course projects from GitHub. Of course, your helicopter cat won’t be there but you’ll have at least a part of your lost files back. Maybe you can reimplement your helicopter cat.

Don’t forget to make a backup on a regular basis, especially when working on important projects.

#3

Sorry to hear you lost all your work Tom, I experienced something similar wiht all my files from the old course. I’ll note that my files were years old and made in Unity 4.x so I didn’t bother trying to figure out what happened. But one thing I have done is start using github to back up my stuff. I’m not much of a fan of keeping my stuff online but it does add an extra layer of protection against losing your work.

#4

Now that you mention it, as I had some experience with C#, I did skim the first projects in both the 2D and 3D courses. So… could well be that Rick told me not to do what I did and I did it anyway, ha-ha.

I built a PC with a smaller SSD for the OS and a large HDD for applications and data, and try to keep as much as possible on the HDD.

Long story short, I’ve got Unity Hub installed at:
D:[username]\Unity\UnityHub

And had my projects saved here:
D:[username]\Unity\Projects

(As an aside, I didn’t realize until too late that Unity Hub installs all the Unity builds on the C drive anyhow… there goes 6gb).

It was quite surprising that the update removed my projects, as the ./projects/ folder was separate from the ./UnityHub/ folder… but perhaps the parent ./Unity/ was created by the install and I simply forgot. It’s also strange to me that UnityHub doesn’t warn you when updating that the folder will be wiped, although I suppose they can’t make everything foolproof.

Really, though, it is entirely my fault as I was not backing up my work properly. As Capricas said, I am very grateful that the 3D course includes an introduction to git as that’s always been something I’d been planning to figure out! Alas I hadn’t actually backed anything up remotely…

#5

Indeed, a warning message would be great. Maybe you should suggest that to the Unity developers.

Git is not a backup system. A true backup system saves an entire project state and never touches it again. Ideally, those project states are saved on an external harddrive. A version control system like Git keeps track of the project changes but it does not make backups of a project state. You are actively working with your project folder and the Git history. If you break the latter, your “backups” are lost, and if you delete the project folder, everything is lost.

For this reason, make backups by duplicating your project folder. Save the duplicated folder on an external harddrive. Don’t change anything in it. That’s the simplest way if you do not have a backup software.

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