What folders should I backup

I’m trying to back up a project on a hard drive. I’ve done it before with only the asset folder, but then I had to redo the project settings and all my custom layers disappeared.

Which folders should I backup? I know library doesn’t need backed up, but are there others that do? Should I backup the logs and temp folders? Thanks

If you configure it properly, you only need to back up Assets/, Packages/ and ProjectSettings/

Remember if you don’t restore from a backup, it isn’t actually a backup!

PROPERLY CONFIGURING AND USING ENTERPRISE SOURCE CONTROL

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:

I usually make a separate repository for each game, but I have some repositories with a bunch of smaller test games.

Here is 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 an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

Generally the ONLY folders you should ever source control are:

Assets/
ProjectSettings/
Packages/

NEVER source control Library/ or Temp/ or Logs/
NEVER source control anything from Visual Studio (.vs, .csproj, none of that noise)

Setting git up with Unity (includes above .gitignore concepts):

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.

If you plan on joining the software industry, you will be required and expected to know how to use source control.

Source control does require learning, but there are TONS of tutorials and courses and online reference.

You should strive to use source control as confidently as you use your file/folder system.

“Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later.” - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards

So I do not need to backup usersettings, temp, logs, and library right?

Inverse the question: which folders can you safely delete? You can find this in any Unity .gitignore file. You can delete those:

  • Library
  • Temp (should not exist if project is closed)
  • Obj
  • Logs

Among those folders, Library will take up 99% of the disk space.
Then check any folder that you may or may not wish to keep, such as:

  • Recordings (default location for Recorder output, contains movies, image sequences)
  • Build(s) (commonly used for build output)