Entire Assets folder disappeared!!!

Unity Engine
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I just imported a new mesh to use for my particle system, and when I clicked on the small circle to assign that mesh, everything went bright pink, the direction of all the particles went in a straight line, and I realized that suddenly my entire Assets folder was empty. Though everything in the hierarchy is still there.

When I open it in the Explorer (Windows), the Assets folder isn’t even there. Someone please help! What do I do?! I tried reopening Unity but everything is still missing!

1 Like
2

WTF?! Have the same problem

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This happened to me too while trying to install a sample from the Input System. Pretty devastating. What is this?

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Did you submit bug report? Which sample did you try to install? What was in your assets folder? It’s hard to say anything based on the info you shared. (OS? Unity version?)

1 Like
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I’m sorry you’ve had this issue. Please consider using source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up.

Here’s how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

Setting up the right .gitignore file:

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The only threads I remember similar to this were when creating IOS builds and setting the output folder to the actual project or Assets folder. Something about how the contents of the output folder need to be deleted before the build is placed there, but you shouldn’t be outputting your builds into the Assets folder anyway (also, professional dev tools generally don’t include training wheels, and will just let you make wrong decisions if you tell it that’s what you want).

Otherwise, other possibilities are actual disk problems or filesystem corruption. Need to use source control and/or backups for any software projects which you have any time invested you don’t want to lose.

2 Likes
7

This problem happened in “Unity 2019” recently in October 2022 also, unfortunately.

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Lost progress / project / work / stuff disappeared in Unity.

This article is to help you when you have lost significant progress or work in your Unity project.

It is designed to give you avenues of discovery and investigation.

It is NOT a guarantee of restoring your lost work. It is NOT a substitute for proper IT / Data security procedures.

To decide which parts are applicable to you, look for major bolded headings.

EVERYTHING IS GONE, YOU CANNOT OPEN THE PROJECT

Your project probably is still on your computer. Try a computer-wide search for some unique filenames that you know are in the project you think is gone.

To start your search, one common file to all Unity projects is named ProjectSettings.asset

Some things that might have happened:

  • you are not opening the project that you think you are
  • you are in the correct project but not opening the same scene you had open before
  • you dragged the project (or part of it) into the trash (intentionally or inadvertently)
  • you moved the project (or part of it) somewhere else (intentionally or inadvertently)
  • an overly-aggressive antivirus solution quarantined it because it saw code being compiled in there
  • you’re using a directory sync like OneDrive or Dropbox… NEVER USE THESE SERVICES WITH UNITY!
  • something else??

As I said, it’s probably still all on your system to be found if you look in the right places.

A typical Unity project will have at a minimum the following folders:

ProjectSettings\
Packages\```

**EVERYTHING IS PRESENT BUT MY SCENE WINDOW IS BLANK**

Close Unity and make a full project backup RIGHT NOW. Do not do ANYTHING else until you back it up 100%.

Ideally copy that backup to another computer, or back it up to another external hard drive entirely. This is just basic data processing best practices during data recovery operations.

If you can see all the files and folders of your project, make sure you are opening the scene file you were working in.

Once you have opened the scene, look in the hierarchy window, select an object and move the mouse over the Scene window and press F to focus that object.

Additional notes:

- ALWAYS use proper industrial grade source control (see below)
- NEVER use Dropbox or any file sync mechanism in Unity.
- NEVER move files within your project, except by doing it within Unity
- ALWAYS be sure you are fully backed up before upgrading Unity

**SCRIPTS OR ASSETS ARE MISSING OR BLANK**

Some info about Missing script warnings, broken prefabs, GUIDs, renaming GUIDs, etc:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/problem-with-git-and-missing-scripts.1090876/#post-7024801
https://forum.unity.com/threads/scriptable-object-data-not-read-after-loading-editor.998413/#post-6487297
https://forum.unity.com/threads/scriptable-object-data-not-read-after-loading-editor.998413/#post-6488230

EVERYTHING in Unity is connected to the above GUID, which is stored ONLY in the metafile.

It is super-easy to inadvertently change it by renaming outside of Unity. Don't do that. Instead:

- close Visual Studio (important!)
- rename the file(s) in Unity
- in Unity do Assets -> Open C# Project to reopen Visual Studio
- now rename the actual classes, and MAKE SURE THE FILE NAMES DO NOT CHANGE!

If you are NOT using source control while you do this, renaming files is an EXTREMELY dangerous process. Use source control at all times so that you can trivially revert if you miss a critical step and damage your project.

I'm sorry you've had this issue. Please consider using proper industrial-grade enterprise-qualified source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

You can also push git repositories to other drives: thumb drives, USB drives, network drives, etc., effectively putting a complete copy of the repository there.

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/prefab-links-keep-getting-dumped-on-git-pull.646600/#post-7142306

Here's how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/2-steps-backwards.965048/#post-6282497

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/when-to-make-a-separate-object-or-class-script-help-me-think-like-a-programmer-example-in-text.1048739/#post-6783740

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/your-techniques-to-share-code-between-projects.575959/#post-3835837

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/removing-il2cpp_cache-from-project.1084607/#post-6997067

Generally setting Unity up (includes above .gitignore concepts):

https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-git-with-unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place. Digital storage is so unbelievably cheap today that you can buy gigabytes of flash drive storage for about the price of a cup of coffee. It's simply ridiculous not to back up.

"Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later." - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards
1 Like
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haha, i had the same problem. My assets folder just disappeared, then i looked up my trash bin and i saw it there and i restored it and it automatically went to my project folder. I dont know how it went to my trash bin