File recovery/ data loss issue.

[Oceanconcepts]

I had a couple of crashes in quick succession. After the first, I caught the pop up notifying me of the ability to recover a locally cached file, which I did successfully.  A very few minutes later, Fusion crashed again.  This time I didn't see the dialog when I restarted Fusion- however checking my dashboard, I see that the last saved version of my file was 23 hours ago (Saturday's server maintenance). When I look at my OSX Notifications, I can see that a File recovery notification was generated 18 minutes ago- this is the one I was able to open after the first crash. 

However, if I try to open this from Notifications, i get an error message telling me that I can't open it, because the application is in the Trash- this despite the fact that Fusion is currently running. 

Where are these files stored, and is there any way to directly reopen a locally cached file?  It seems this option- to search for and recover a locally cached file- should be accessible in the interface rather than dependent on a dialog that can flash past or not be available.  

[AndrewSears]

Ron,

I don't know about the MAC locations yet but I am finding out or will have someone add the info.  For windows, I look in 2 places to see if the data is there.

We are storing local files that you worked on and those that crashed.  Below are my locations but what you see could be different if you check on your Windows machine and MAC.

For windows here is where I look for cached data

C:\Users\searsa\AppData\Local\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\200908221438811\PLM360Cache\a360proue29c8e83.autodeskplm360.net\1 

The generic windows path for cached data is below

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\<product>\<oxygennumber>\PLM360Cache\<tenant>\<workspace>

For windows here is where I look for crash recovery data

C:\Users\searsa\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\Autodesk Fusion 360\CrashRecovery

Hopefully you can find your lost data with this info until the MAC path can be posted.

Andy 

[Oceanconcepts]

Andy,

I was fairly easily able to recreate what I had done, so I'm not concerned for the moment about my files.  But my thought is that the recovery interface isn't always working as it should, and that the need to discover a local cache version is a foreseeable issue, and perhaps deserves some treatment in the UI to make this easier. 

[AndrewSears]

Understood Ron.  Just so you know, I was not trying to give you a workaround as a way to avoid dealing with the issue.  Just wanted to make sure you are staying productive.  Glad to hear you did not lose to much data. 

I have not experienced data loss with a crash but I will spend more time watching out for it when reproducible.  

Thanks,

Andy 

[jakefowler]

Hi Ron,

We've looked into this and you might be right, this could well be due to some logic issue in the auto recovery process. The recovery cache gets cleared in certain circumstances, and if you didn't see the dialog the second time around, it's possible that the recovered file had already been cleared from the cache (the dialog should be an accurate reflection of the cache contents).

We're investigating the logic to see if there's any way we can reduce the likelihood of recovered files being unexpectedly cleared. For now, it's probably best practice to save the recovered file as a new version immediately after recovering it.

Hope this helps!
Jake

[cekuhnen]

the past two days I experience just the same work, crash all lost and recovery produced and empty file.

[kingson138]

Hi Jake, I once sent a PM to Keqing about the File saving, and wrong versions problem. He said they are looking into it now. At that time no one reported that problem yet.  Seems like more users are discovering that now. Basically the latest Versions I saved to the cloud were different from versions i opened subsequently and luckily i saved archive files on my disk. Older versions of one to two weeks' old were actually opened like they were promoted upwards by themselves. I actually imported back after I deleted the cloud versions.  I believe that happened after the major update to the Parametric Version. After I replaced the wrong versions with the archives on my computer they seems to be fine now. But what an horror seeing old versions coming out instead of new ones.  I think in  future updates the team should be more careful on the data management since all of our files are valuable commercial properties now. Thanks for your attention!

[jakefowler]

Hi Claas and Kingson,

Thanks for these updates, and many apologies for the inconvenience these issues have caused you both. 

It's possible that these issues are related to a known problem in save behaviour: Frank from our team offered a possible workaround to this problem (see the last two posts on the thread). Does this work for either of you? If this doesn't, and you suspect your files have actually been corrupted, let us know (and send us the f3d of the file(s) in question, if possible) and we'll be sure to investigate further.

We’re certainly taking these reports seriously, and we're just putting the finishing touches on an update which is focussed on improving stability (particularly in Parametric workflows), including fixes for issues related to file saving. This update should be with you shortly, and hopefully should address some of the issues you’re seeing. If you continue to see problems like this after the next update, we'd certainly like to know.

Many thanks, and apologies again,

Jake

[kingson138]

Hi Jake,

Thanks for your reply. Actually I am OK now after I deleted the wrong versions and imported the latest from my archives. The file saving problems only happened to me after the major updates to Parametric Mode sometimes in January I believe. I think it only applied to old files. When I was trying to modified old files with the new updated version possibly using the parametric Mode. The latest versions were not saved after that. Luckily I made that into a habit to save "new versions" and export to Archive all the time. Yes I hope the new updates will fix most of the problems in the Parametric mode. I really wish to use Parametric mode efficiently. It is a wonderful idea to use the timeline. For the mean time I defaulted back to DM mode and had been working beautifully for me.  I think some users also reported some similar file savings issues.

[cekuhnen]

Hi there,

I sofar only had this experience that the recovery was more or less empty with many files.

to me this was sofar not limited just to a certain file.

os x 10.8 and 10.9 imac 2008.

[jakefowler]

Many thanks for the quick replies!

Kingson - Glad to hear you've recovered from that issue, and thanks for those extra background details. We'll look and see if there's anything we can reproduce in the workflow you describe.

Claas - If you see this issue again, if you're able to send us the empty/nearly empty file (using Export Archive), that might be a first thing for us to look at. Was this happening on files you had worked on for long periods, or just on recently created files? We've not seen actual data corruption in recovery files before as far as I know, so the only explanation I can think of at the moment is a problem with the backup period, or recovery backups failing to update on schedule.

Thanks very much again,

Jake

[kingson138]

Hi Jake, when that happened, it might had been a crash with empty recovery files just as Class described that. Parametric Mode does have error reporting dialog boxes flashing out sometimes and then the  program closes by itself. That might had been the case. Forgot to say under what circumstances, usually when working with very small objects of less than 2.5mm diameter like PUSH Pull on the side of a hole, or extruding very small diameter circle sketches of less than 2.5mm. (I work on small objects for Rings as you might recall.)

[cekuhnen]

Yep I will do so!

[fuzzydolphin]

In Fusion 360,

Is there any way to recover from the local cache after a data loss.  I can't find any of my changes for today. It says that the last set of changes occurred 22 hours ago while I worked on the design all afternoon.

I didn't see any errors and I am now paranoid that I cannot close my laptop with this program running.

BTW, I am on OSX 10.8.5 running Fusion 360 2.0.1072

[kingson138]

Hi I suggest you not to close your laptop until Jake replied to you. He is in Shanghai and should get your message by now or send him a PM and ask for help. For the mean time can you "Export to Archive" and export f3d file to you local disk? previous versions usually are still there and if your present data is not there that happened to me before. Jake is the best guy to report to. Your latest version might had been saved in the cloud but the older version promoted upwards by itself. I reported that case already. you might want to check versions and see if you can find your latest versions. If you were not in a crash there might not be local recovery file there. The program will save your file at a designated time by itself.

Worse case is you have to make sure you old file is there and start again. This time save every two to three minutes. I do that. If you are using Timeline mode, switch to Direct Model mode. The recording mode has lots of problems and before they fixed them, maybe you should use Direct Modeling mode. I am sorry this happened to you. It happened to me before. Luckily i saved archive to my local drive. I deleted the files in the cloud and import f3d files again.
make sure your archive local information also saved to a few other places as backup. I saved to two outside Raid5 disk arrays.

But if you latest file really gone you just have to redo the files again but save every few minutes and save to archive also. Use Direct Modeling mode. That will minimize this problem.

[jakefowler]

Hi fuzzydolphin,

Very sorry to hear about the problems you’re encountering. And many thanks for the suggestions Kingson - Export Archive can be used to locally backup if you are encountering save issues (Although we hope in most cases that this isn’t necessary. We’re taking these reports seriously though, and are continuing to make improvements to our backend).

Fusion 360 keeps a couple of file caches - one for crash recovery (the list from this cache should be presented to you after reopening Fusion 360 following a crash), and one for regular cloud saves (which is generally only accessible if you enter Offline Mode, i.e. when your network connection gets disconnected). 

Given this sounds like an emergency, you can do a ‘brute force’ search of all your caches to see when the last file was saved. Try the following:

1. With Finder active, open the Go menu (from the Apple menu bar) and select 'Go to Folder…'. 
2. In the field that appears, type '~/Library/Application Support/Autodesk/Autodesk Fusion 360/'. 
3. Now, in the Spotlight search field (top-right corner of the Finder window), type 'kind:f3d', and hit Return. Select "Autodesk Fusion 360" at the top of the search results to narrow the search to this folder. 
4. If you order the results by Date Modified, you should find the most recently cached Fusion 360 files.

The files will likely have long random-looking filenames, but the beginning of the filename should indicate the original model name. If you find file(s) which were saved recently, try copying (not moving) these files to another location, then upload these to your Dashboard to see if this recovers any of the lost data. 

Would it be possible to give us more details of what is happening when you close your laptop? (Once you’ve tried saving/restoring your data, of course). Is Fusion 360 still running when you reopen? Do you see any crash report dialogs? If so, have you submitted any of these? This info should help us follow-up on what’s going wrong.

Apologies again for the trouble, and many thanks for getting in touch about this.

Kind regards,

Jake

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