Recovering accidently deleted route

Chris750

New member
So I deleted some stuff off my laptop yesterday, and one program was taking a very long time to delete and I quickly found out why, instead of the program itself uninstalling, it uninstalled everything on the drive! This is the second time that has happened to me, the other was long ago and not sure why as virus and malware scans turn up blank.

Anyway, I fired up RECUVA and it found the 124gb of files and I was able to recover TANE, but before I copy it back onto my D drive from the recovery drive I would like to know to what folder does TANE save custom built routes? I read another thread that said 'C\user\....local' but everything in that folder for me is empty with dates back to 2016. I have (had) TANE installed to my D drive, is it in my build folder? I hope so as I got all but a single file back (manifest.chump file).
 
I THINK I may have found it, is it the local folder inside the editing folder in TANE install on my D drive? The dates are of 18 July so I hope so. Either way, I was able to get back my backup of the route, losing about 3 weeks of work but most of that I was testing so not a huge loss. Yep, I backed up the route but never got around to transferring it to a different drive, LAZY!
 
Lucky...

When you open an asset, including a route or session, for editing T:ANE makes a backup of the asset. The assets are placed in the Backups folder which you have discovered and are arranged by date.

This is well and good, but things have changed with how the data is handled so restoring data in T:ANE is no longer as easy as it once was.

Prior to SP2, one could simply go into the backups folder, and drag the kuid-folder-name (The folder in the backups/(backup date) would be something like this for a route: kuid 124863 101039 The Enfield and E, with the name being truncated).

So to restore a route that I ruined and needed to replace, I would find this folder and drag it back into Content Manager or use import a content folder. This was great and worked like a charm, but as usual N3V had to throw a monkey wrench into the works and make this more complex.

Starting with SP2 you needed to copy a .tzarc file of the same name into the editing folder and run a DBR. This worked okay, but it was a longer more annoying process. And now things have changed yet again as I found out the hard way. For some reason these .tzarc files are not compatible with SP3! Yes I found this out the other day, and need to write this up in detail.

The solution was to use a third-party tools (thank god for programmers who write nifty things for us), and I ended up using a tool by user vvmm called TZarchiver, which is available here:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/vvmm/software-f56/

What you do is extract this from the zip file - I found 7zip to be the best for this.
Create a short-cut to it and run it. The interface is simple to use by simply dragging the .tzarc you want to extract into one column and the output is shown on the other. Once extracted, simply import the results into T:ANE.
 
Hey John; Thanks for the information. Yep, I tried importing content with my backed up TANE install on my backup drive and it wouldn't do it, but like you said, in TS12 it was easy. Will try your method and report back.
 
Sometimes it seems that Trainz is like that drunken sailor. One step forward, 2 steps sideways and one step back. What ever happened to the KISS principle?:eek:
 
Well the MH route is gone. I just found out that while SSDs are faster then HDD, they suck when something gets deleted and you want it back. Unlike a HDD the SSD throws bits of files all over the drive, thus recovering a cluster on an SSD may only get bits of the file, unlike a HDD. So while it shows that I got all my files back, everyone of them is corrupt and will not open as bits and pieces are missing. My backups of the route on my backup drive are too far in the past, I don't wish to start painting the ground again.

Lesson learnt the hard way, if your route is on an SSD make sure you back it up to something else.
 
Bummer. SSDs work differently internally than hard drives. Their file structure is emulated to appear as a hard drive while in reality they are NVRAM cells which save the data.

There are various utilities out there which can assist with that, and hopefully they can do the job for you. One of them that I use is by EaseUS.

I've used drive management software from a company called EaseUS and one of the programs they makes can recover stuff from SSDs.

https://www.easeus.com/data-recovery/other-recovery-software/SSD-drive-recovery.htm

Since the data is lost now, it might be worth giving it a try and see if anything can be recovered. They offer both a free and purchase version, and their prices are reasonable.
 
I tried 3 different recovery programs, all end up with corrupted files. To be honest, while I was proud of how my route looked, once I started play testing it I realized it wasn't all that fun! It was too linear. I have reinstalled TANE back into my D drive so files have been over written now. I bet that program would have worked too! I used Recuva and a couple of others but I think they were all geared to HDD.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to run it, but I am sure all is lost now.
 
I tried 3 different recovery programs, all end up with corrupted files. To be honest, while I was proud of how my route looked, once I started play testing it I realized it wasn't all that fun! It was too linear. I have reinstalled TANE back into my D drive so files have been over written now. I bet that program would have worked too! I used Recuva and a couple of others but I think they were all geared to HDD.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to run it, but I am sure all is lost now.

It might be too late and give it a try anyway. The HDD tools I think are different, but I don't know absolutely and I don't want to experiment to find out.

But anyway I've done that with stuff I've worked on as well. I thought it was totally absolutely awesome until I started using it and it was then that I found I had done so many awful things all I could do is start over. In your case, as it was with mine, your second go around will be a heck of a lot better than the first.
 
Third actually. However, my Moosonee route is still sitting on my backup HDD, so I may install it and see how it goes, it was built in TS12 and is 250km long.

For Medicine Hat it wasn't that I did something wrong, it was that the industries there serve cities far away, so in the route case you would go to industry X and do what? Ok, you load the cars and now what? Well you can bring them to the yard or take them to a portal but that was it...WEEE.

I am going to build a 1920s lumber and coal route, where I live was heavy into those industries in the 1900s, but I will make sure things go around in a circle.

Thanks for all your help bro.
 
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One of the better backup programs I use is "syncbackfree" you can set it up to copy a file or folder to any available drive. I use a large USB3 drive, and also to OneDrive. This can be set to back on a certain day or every day at a certain time and/or before you shut down for the day just run the backup manually.
Hope this helps before you have another disaster.
 
Thanks for the tip. I had a copy of my route but I got complacent being two years with never a problem so I just left it sitting on my D drive instead of moving it to my backup HDD that attaches with a Startech USB cable. That I am not too concerned about losing it shows that it wasn't a very fun route anyway.

Cheers!
 
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