Lost Campaign info

[Caratacus]

Help!
I have been running a Savage Worlds campaign for several months on FG Classic. So far we've completed about ten sessions along with about 50 hours of prep, NPCs, story lines, Encounters, etc. Earlier this week I had a challenge while running a Windows 10 update, and since that point all my NPCs, stories and encounter info have disappeared from just this one campaign. My other FG campaigns are intact. Surely the info would be in my saved files somewhere but I have no idea as to how to identify them and if I do where to re-install or move them.
The kicker is all the time lost, as everything else about the platform has been excellent, so please help me recover these files.

Caratacus

[LordEntrails]

Inside your campaign folder you will have a bunch of 'db.sessions.<date>' files. If you are uncomfortable doing the following, then post a screen shot of your campaign folder with the size and date of the files shown (like below). What you want to do is copy your db.xml file, then copy the latest session file that has a non zero file size and rename it to db.xml, then restart FG and open your campaign. Continue going back in time until you find the one with the data you want to keep.

[Granamere]

Also this might be the wrong time to mention it but you really should make backups of your campaign folders from time to time. You never know if you had a computer or hard drive problem all of it would be lost.

[Caratacus]

Indeed. At my age I should be smarter, or should I say will be smarter going forward. Love this platform, it has kept us going through this extraordinary year.

[LordEntrails]

Ok, so first thing is to turn on the file name extensions, typically View > Options > Show Filename Extensions.
Exit FG
Then copy the db.xml file to db-bad.xml
Then copy and rename db.backup.1605664315.xml to db.xml
Restart FG, launch your campaign.
All good?

[damned]

Rename db.xml
Pick the 900kb file.
Make a copy of it and rename the copy (not the original) as db.xml
Load campaign in FG

[Trenloe]

Indeed. At my age I should be smarter, or should I say will be smarter going forward. Love this platform, it has kept us going through this extraordinary year.
This shows that there was a problem just after 8pm on the 17th. FG creates a backup file if it starts a campaign and sees that data wasn't saved properly previously. During this process of identifying an issue with a previous session, a popup window would have giving some feedback as to the issue and the creation of a backup file. Keep an eye out for messages like this in future...

[Caratacus]

AWESOME!!
Thanks very much to each of you for helping and old uncomputer geek. This community rocks!

Any suggestions for the best method of saving in case of a similar hiccup. Should I keep all the files on a USB for example? This is a great laptop but nothing is foolproof these days.

[LordEntrails]

Your laptop hard drive is more reliable than a USB drive. BUT, you might want to backup to a USB drive.

Or, you could backup to OneDrive or Google Drive for free. See this post for a very capable batch file you can use; https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?35578-How-to-back-up-AppData-folder-to-OneDrive-automatically&p=308736&viewfull=1#post308736

[Granamere]

The big thing is not on the same drive as the existing campaign. You know in case you lose it or it breaks. :)

[Nylanfs]

And don't forget the back up to a secure off line location, and the backup to a HD that you store in a faraday cage, in a different location from your other copies, and the emergency last resort of printing out the hard copy.

[Trenloe]

Or, you could backup to OneDrive or Google Drive for free.
And make sure you only use active cloud sync/backup solions for manual backups of FG data when FG isn't running. Don't point any of these solutions directly at your active FG data directories, otherwise you could well lose campaign data due to FG files getting corrupted. Use something like the post LordEntrails linked.