Can't Save Project due to Backup File Error

[Anonymous]

I have been working on projects recently and when I save, an error keeps popping up saying that it is unable to create the backup file MaxBack.bak in the autoback folder. This error is preventing me from saving. How can I fix this?

[laurent_gibert]

Hi @Anonymous, you can disable autosave in Files>Preferences>Files>Backup on save

However this is annoying and might be the symptom of something else. Maybe a folder right issue. Try out to disable the autobak, then tries to save. Also, always tell us the 3ds Max version you are using, thanks.

Laurnet

[denisT.MaxDoctor]

please post a screenshot of the error message and all errors that the system print out to the MXS listener

[Anonymous]

This is it:

[Anonymous]

Sorry, this is it. I have attached the picture.

[Anonymous]

Hello Laurent,

I am using 3ds Max 2016. I tried unchecking "Backup on Save" as well as disabling Auto Backup, but I started getting these errors when I saved:

[denisT.MaxDoctor]

All these messages look unfamiliar to me. I can guess only that the issue is caused by some 3rd-party plugin or script you have on your machine.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

It's interesting to me that it wants to name the autoback files .bak instead of .max.  Did you by chance override the Autoback file name in the Customize->Preferences->Files area?  (I believe the default name is simply "AutoBackup")

Can you also verify for me please that this folder exists in the area where it's try to save the file?  (C:\Users\Jack\Documents\3dsMax\autoback\)

As I look at your photo I do see some differences in the pathing.  One has "My 3dsMax" and the other is "3dsMax".  Would you mind posting a screenshot of your Configure User Paths window for me, please?  (Shown below.)  You can find it in Customize->Configure User Paths.  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I checked the file section under preferences and the auto backup file name is simply named "AutoBackup" like you said. I never changed this.

C:\Users\Jack\Documents\3dsMax\autoback does exist and it contains four files: AutoBackup01.max, AutoBackup02.max, AutoBackup03.max, and MaxBack.bak

I have attached a shot of my Configure User Paths below.

One more thing I would like to mention is when this started. I was moving files from my computer over to an external hard drive, including the "My 3dsMax" folder that contains my 3ds Max projects. When I started a project and noticed the broken link problems, I immediately moved "My 3dsMax" back to my computer to the same folder it was in before. Most of the problems went away except for the problems that I have addressed here. I hope this helps.

Thank you!

John

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thank you for the information @Anonymous, I appreciate it.  This is definitely a new one for me so I wanted to thank you for your patience here.  I half expected that path to be to a different place but everything seems in order.  

It might be worth trying to reset your user settings.  If you do, you just need to close max and rename your old ENU folder, this way if there is no positive effect you can rename it back if you want to.  

Is this Windows 10?  We've seen some permissions issues cause some problems in Windows 10 with 2016 in the past, and this article addresses most of them.  Maybe it's scanning this new file with Windows Defender which holds it up.  (Guessing.)

Lastly in order to be thorough maybe we should check for any system errors in the Event Viewer Logs.  My reasoning here is the something is preventing the write, and it may likely have a system or OS cause.  Hard drive errors possibly?  Sometimes windows user profiles can be corrupted as well which lead to strange errors.  If you create a new user on your machine and log into that user, do you see any differences?  

Thanks for looking at those things and for the detailed info in your previous post.  I appreciate the teamwork here!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Thanks again for all your help!

I renamed the ENU folder and opened up a file in the "My 3dsMax" folder and for much longer than usual, it was saving fine. After a while, I eventually got an "Unable to Create Backup File" error. I waited a few seconds, then I clicked the error away and clicked save, it continued to work again, so this is definitely progress!

Yes, I am using Windows 10, although I've been using it for almost two years and I have never run into any problems with 3ds Max until now.

I created a new user and used 3ds Max and it works fine. This doesn't surprise me, because it seems that if I create any projects outside of the "My 3dsMax", there are no problems. If I create a project from scratch in "My 3ds Max" it has no problems until I import in any objects from another project in that folder, then the problems arise again. If I import an object from a project in "My 3dsMax" into a project saved in another folder, there are no problems. If we can't find a solution, I should probably be able to make it work by creating new projects in a new folder and importing everything from my projects in "My 3dsMax" into those new projects.

We are definitely making progress!

Jack

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Thank you for the update and up-beat attitude @Anonymous!  

I have a couple clarification questions and thanks for taking the time to answer them.  

1)  Is it possible the file is created and then immediately another process is accessing the file or locking it up?  This can happen if it's a shared folder for backup software or something similar.  Some programs that might do this are DropBox, OneDrive, or any other kind of online backup software.   Usually for problems I have a number of notes internally and the only one I have with similar error messages is this one related to online backup software.  Is that a possibility?  If not, please continue to 2).  

2) You'd mentioned everything was saving for longer than usual.  That's great, but also strange.  If the error only happens sometimes and no other process is monitoring that folder, that does kind of point back toward the OS, security, or possibly a failing hard drive.  Did you see anything noteworthy in the event viewer logs?  (Usually they can tell you if a drive is starting to go bad.)  It almost sounds like a bad block or sector on the drive and W10 can't save to that location on the drive.  Is the drive old? 

3) Would you mind trying to error check the drive in Windows as well, please?  

4) When you created the new user, was *everything* fine?  Meaning, no matter where you saved the file or imported from?  If so, then maybe it's just a result of a corrupted user profile.  Rare but does happen.  If not, then I don't think it's the profile but thanks for trying that!  If it is a corrupted profile, there's no easy fix I've ever found and I end up migrating my user settings from one to the other.  

5) Does this folder "My 3ds Max" have any permissions differences compared to the standard 3ds Max project folder?  

Thanks again for the details!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the help @Alfred.DeFlaminis

I think I might have figured out the issue. I use Google Backup and Sync to backup all of my important files and "My 3ds Max" was one of the folders selected for backup. Google Backup and Sync syncs a file immediately once it has been created or changed, so I wouldn't be surprise if that is playing a large role in this. I took "My 3ds Max" out of the folders to be synced and now there do not appear to be any problems. This is probably why when I created a project outside of that folder, I didn't have problems. Although I did notice that while I don't get the corruption or file writing errors outside of the synced folders, I did still get the autobackup error, although I was able to stop that by turning off autobackup in Preferences. This is probably a good discovery, although now I am not backing up my 3ds Max projects. Is there a better way to backup 3dsMax files?

I currently don't have any zipping software for saving the event viewer logs, but I can get some if you think I should still do this.

I did an error check and I did not find any issues.

When I was working in the new user, I didn't use anything from previous projects because I didn't have immediate access to it. I could probably bring a project over there and try importing it into another project on the new user if you think that I should.

"My 3dsMax" does not appear to have any different permissions than "3dsMax".

Thanks, I hope this helps!

john.jmg.gage

[Alfred.DeFlaminis · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the update @Anonymous, this is great.  

I think you're right, that Google Drive was blocking the save of the file.  Now I just need to figure out why Autoback is acting up.  I'm guessing the Autoback.bak file is possibly corrupt and we just need to move it out of there and let Max generate a new one next time you "Hold" in Max. 

Please go into the C:\Users\Jack\Documents\3dsMax\autoback folder where the autobacks are getting saved to, and make a new folder and move all autoback contents into that new folder.  This should prompt Max to re-create those files (once you re-enable autoback).  My feeling is that this may do the trick.  Thanks so much for trying that!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hey @Alfred.DeFlaminis, looks like we found the solution!

That seemed to do the trick! It saves fine now! Looks like when there are issues with the auto backup, just create a new folder in the autoback folder and set that folder as the path for AutoBackup in Configure User Paths.

My only remaining question is how should I backup my 3ds Max files if I can't do it with Google Drive? Would something like Dropbox work better?

Thanks again for all of your help, I really appreciate it!

john.jmg.gage

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

All right!  Thanks for the update and confirmation, that's great!  

The key takeaway seems to be that you can still backup files to Google Drive, you just might not be able to work directly out of that folder because of how the process locks up files from time to time.  I can think of a few possibilities, they might require a bit of trial and error.  

1) You could set your autoback number of files from 3 to maybe 99 or so.  This way it's unlikely that Google Drive is still accessing a specific autoback by the time it gets to the point where it needs to overwrite it.  There's a possibility that it'll never really 'let go' of those files in which case we have 2).

2) You could possibly create a shortcut to your autoback folder inside of your Google Drive folder.  This way you can quickly and easily double click it, select them all and back them up.  You could do this with any project folder as well, or possibly automate this task which I talk a bit about in 3).

3) It may be possible to tell Windows to automatically backup files from your autoback folder into your My 3ds Max folder / Google drive folder.  I'll admit I don't have personal experience with this, but I did find this link which may help with it.  

Do you think any of those could work?

There are two things left here to do after this particular issue.  The first is something I need to do.  Currently this thread is located in the Programming forum but we've narrowed this down to a general Max problem.  I am going to go ahead and transfer this thread to the general forum so that other users with this issue can find it and benefit from our fruitful back and forth exchanges.   The last thing is a favor I'm asking from me to you.  If you could please mark any posts that helped to solve this issue for you "As Solution" that would really be great!  That helps this thread come up easier in searches and increases the chance that this knowledge will benefit others.  Thank you so much for doing that!

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

 Hey @Alfred.DeFlaminis,

I will probably just use task scheduler to schedule when the sync happens so that it won't sync while I am working, I think this should do the trick. I have selected the two posts that give the solution to both of my problems that I was having as solution.

Thank you so much again for all of the help you have given me, I really, REALLY, appreciate it!

john.jmg.gage

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Happy to help @Anonymous, thank you for taking the time to communicate all that information with me.  Together, we rocked this!   

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Simple solution :-
Go to Window defender security center > Virus & threat protection > Virus & threat protection settings > & Turn off CONTROLLED FOLDER ACCESS.

[luismestre]

To solve this issue you can due the following as well:

1- Save As the file with a different name ( "My_File_001.max ) 

2- Open the new file and overwrite the old one 

or 

3- delete the old file & rename the one 

4- open the file and do a normal save 

The autobackup & save issue will be gone.