Crashed while saving, file corrupt, 9 days of work lost

[Jon Chambers]

Yes, I know it's lost forever. It's a common story I've heard before, and although I would try anything to get it back, I'm not holding my breath.

My real question, is how do the professionals avoid this? Should I stop clicking save and start clicking save as, along with a long version number? Is there an extension or program or windows setting that makes recovery past a bad save possible?

[kglad]

1. to prevent that, each save should have a different name.  eg, if i have a project called farm_aid, i save as farm_aid_v000.fla, farm_aid_v001.fla, farm_aid_v002 etc.

i created a jsfl file, added it to my commands directory and created a shortcut, so after naming the first save as farm_aid.fla, the _vxyz is automatically appended when using my shortcut (ctrl-shift-s, in my case).   (if you're interested, i'll supply that jsfl file and walk you through the steps to use it.)

also, save often.  a typical project for me will have several hundred versions.  i periodically delete the oldest ones and only save the last 10 or 20 in case i need to return to an older version.

also, all my code is in class files and i've never had one get corrupted.  if i'm about to make a major change in a class file and i don't want to risk losing the older class file, i'll save it as ClassNameBU.as so i have a backup.

2. you may be able to salvage, at least, some part of your work by renaming the corrupt fla as a rar file and using winrar to 'repair' it.  then rename the repaired rar to a fla and try opening in animate cc.  i've never had that work for me, but it's worth a try.

but even if when that fails, you can usually unrar your renamed fla and salvage, at least, some of your work.  again, it's worth a try.

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

I have a different approach to kglad. Which isn't to say his way is wrong, but my way has some convenience to it, in that most of it is done for me.

I have Time Machine running (I expect there's a Windows version of that). With that I have hourly backups for the last day, and daily backups for the previous month. I have rarely had to do this, but when I get a file corrupted I just look back in time to find the newest backup that doesn't have the problem. Most times that is a version that is less than an hour old.

On top of that I will save a copy of the file to some other place, but instead of making my work file change name all the time, I just change the name of the backup file. Like, if I'm working on MyGame.fla, I will be working on that named file perhaps for a few months. The occasional backups would have names like MyGame_1_1_17.fla.

Overall there is no real difference, both approaches give you a set of different named files of older versions, but by keeping the working file with the same name I don't have to remember to set the publishing settings to a fixed name. It's very easy to forget that, and find yourself with yet another app-descriptor XML file being created.

Something you should know about the auto recovery save feature. It used to be that when you save a file the previous recovery file was deleted before the save is done. A while ago that was changed, and now the recovery file is deleted after the save has succeeded. So, if you're using a recent version of Flash Pro or Animate you should be able to use the recovery file if there is a crash while saving.

[Jon Chambers]

Could you give me the step by step idiots guide to recovering from recovery file? Because normally it opens automatically

[Colin Holgate]

Normally you are asked if you want to open the first recovery file from the previous session after a crash, but I can imagine that not always working, especially if there was a crash during a save. So, just look in the same folder as the main FLA, for a file that is named RECOVER_whatever.fla. 'whatever' would really be the name of your FLA. If you see it there you can open the file, and after making sure it's in good condition you could do a Save As to get its name back to normal. I have had to do that before, and I would just do a Save As with the original name, to replace the suspect FLA.