Hello all,
concerning the current project update I have something rather unpleaseant to report. A 'screw up' or you might call it 'one backup too far'.
Here is what happened:
Last night I tried out a new demo version of a game and it seems, as far as I can tell, that the install must have gone into the wrong folder, my main game folder instead of the desired subfolder, which I didn't notice at the time. When I decided that I didn't like to keep the demo and uninstalled it later that evening again, the installer seems to have removed EVERYTHING from the folder it was installed to, not just its own files/folders, including all current flight sim installations and mods along with all other games having been installed in the main game folder. That wouldn't have been a problem since I keep daily backups that run after midnight. But as I didn't notice my mistake and didn't check the main game folder again before the backups ran, the nightly backup than synced the empty folder and effectively deleted the most current backups too, as I realized this morning and what I habe been able to tell from the logs so far.
Long story short, around one month of small changes/improvements, additional textures etc. just went down the drain in one night, including the most current backups. Nice!
Will have to make sure I do not stumble over my own feet again! - Yeah, I can hear you all thinking 'use incremental backups, as I do....'. Sorry, I have seen these go belly up in the past too often ending up with 'frankenbuilds' due to some mix-up and having have to revert to the last full backup anyway. Probably, just this time they would have been the lifesaver. Excuse me ranting, I will stop it now!
My current degree of frustration just shows me how much I have become to like this project. Having already begun restauration from around one month old backups I keep on external drives, it will take me some time to get up to speed again due to the amount of data loss, so please do not expect new stuff anytime soon. Will keep working on it and keep you updated on the progress, as usual.
Besides, I already call it the summer of data loss, since just a month ago one of my large backup drives went belly up due to a hardware fault, barely four years old. On the other hand my trusty/rusty array of about ten-year old IDE drives that most of the time have been running 24/7, and I now use just for backup, seems to be unbreakable, haven't yet lost a single drive so far.
Wish you all a nice and trouble-free weekend!
Peter