Inventory Losses --- yet again

[Chic Aeon]

Last week there was a fellow posting here that lost 15,000 ish rezzed items because he was locked out of his (presumably sold) sim). I advised him to take backups of his remaining sim for "safekeeping", something I have done religiously for years.  I have many many MANY backups of items in redundant folders throughout my inventory. I learned my lesson when I first lost 10,000 items  -- my complete Home and Garden folder (this maybe eight years ago). 

 

I know that all those copies will not guarantee that I keep my favorite items forever -- but it SHOULD help. Shouldn't it?    

Well apparently not so much.    

 

I have been fairly philosophical about losing items over the years. I am guessing at least 25,000 in my twelve years. After all, there are new and often better items coming out all the time. IF it was an item I made then I have the active files and -- if I REALLY REALLY still want that item  --- I can upload and retexture and add animations et al.  So far so good.

 

In the past I have lost items here and there and oftentimes whole folders. Now and then those items reappeared in VERY odd places --- sometimes month or even years later. The database is a very mystical thing it seems.  

 

Lately I have been missing things. Many things. I tell myself that I just can't find them or that maybe I decided to get rid of them  --- or ...     But that really isn't what is going on. Today I was looking for a few items to add to my new sim. One was a couch made of stone that was the "special" prize at a gacha even some time ago.  Searching for couch didn't find the item. Searching for stone didn't find the item. Searching items "made by me" didn't help and looking in the folder where it absolutely SHOULD have been (I keep all my releases in very carefully marked folders) didn't help. It just wasn't there.    

 

But wait, that stone couch was out on the ground level of LEA6 when I picked things up  a year and a half ago. It will be THERE even if coalesced.  How smart am I? (insert pat on back).  Turns out not so smart since the folders from the takedown of LEA6 were missing more than half of their original items.   SO NOT GOOD.  You can imagine how many folders and folders within folders there are when you take down a full sim.  Not much there anymore.     The same scenario happened with some other objects although I did find a Moroccan fountain in my set up file for Fantasy Faire 2017.   The search went on.   I needed a pizza box and I knew my alt had a really nice one as a group gift from Dutchie. Guess what? Not there. My alt doesn't delete much and certainly not anything nice. 

 

Eventually I was hoping that things were REALLY STILL on the server but that I just couldn't "see" them in Firestorm, that small corrupted file that does that. So I logged onto the Linden viewer to see if things were there.   My "Stone Couch" WAS there but not my completely empty folder of animated attachments from 2018 or my missing "moving" files. Logging back into Firestorm the couch was still there happily, but all other missing items I had been searching for were still missing. 

 

There have been times in the past when inventory losses were rampant and Linden Lab admitted that yes, they lost stuff. This is just a post to keep folks aware that things DO disappear and even making multiple backups in inventory does not guarantee safety.  The safest thing you can do is REZ what you want to keep.  Not so good with wearables though, or animations, or scripts or textures ---- you get the idea :D.

 

So be vigilant.  

 

PS.   The losses this time seemed to be throughout my inventory which is new --- at least to me.  For the last two or three years I have painstakingly opened each folder in my trash before emptying. This to make sure I had not mistakenly put a folder inside a folder.  So that wasn't an issue. And for many of my missing items the folder that they should have been in were there --- and with SOME items that should have been there STILL there --- just with many missing things.   

It makes me wonder why I do all this backing up and filing and careful redundant saving when it apparently does no good. 

 

So that's my fairly depressing report. Real life is tough enough; it would be nice if we didn't have additional worries in our virtual ones.  

[Emma Krokus]

I am really sorry to hear about your lost and missing items, Chic. It's something that worries me a lot. 

One thing that could work... like the old marketplace boxes that we used to have to keep rezzed - may be to box up the stuff from your inventory and leave it out inworld somewhere... I stuff duplicates of my marketplace items into my work platform haha.

When I had some sims in other worlds, I used to do that all the time with my whole inventory. Inventory losses were rampant there, items rezzed out would be saved in OAR files and these seemed reasonably stable in comparison.

What other ways do people use to back-up?

Emma

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

For notecards textures and scripts that are full-perm, Radegast does a good inventorybackup. For objects you have built yourself, Singularity and other TPVs have ways of saving them to xml files. For everything else, your suggestion of boxing up is about all there is, but ... what happens when the boxes themselves vanish from your inventory?

[Emma Krokus]

That is why I used to leave them rezzed inworld, and currently inside my inworld work platform.

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

... what happens when the boxes themselves vanish from your inventory?

Which has happened to me. :D.   Only once that I can remember long ago == at least that I have found and recognized as a loss.  Edit:  This box was rezzed in world and was oddly replaced by an empty box a few months later.  Again that was over a decade ago so possibly not applicable now.   

I do have  a few things boxed (no copy plants that were sold in huge sets for example) but not really for "safety".    For all my mesh items I have the original files and I could have uploaded the stone couch again along with the texture (just one) but I also would have had to set the animations for three people which takes quite a bit of time. So not exactly something I was looking forward to.  

Sometimes though our losses are irreplaceable -- older items no longer available, rare gacha items, gifts etc.  

 

Now and then a single item will disappear from the whole grid (not a DMCA take-back that we used to have) .  That is extremely puzzling but it does happen.  I lost my store logo texture a few years back and it wasn't in any of my alt's inventories OR the inventories of event organizers who had been using it for signage. THAT was really strange.   I finally got it back via Opensim where I had uploaded. BAD girl, it was so old that I no longer had a copy  on my computer.  

 

One thing that I DO KNOW is if you have the UUID of the object you don't want to lose, you are more likely to get it back by sending in a support ticket. I have my Firestorm kitty's ID in a notecard (hopefully still - I guess I better check that) just for that purpose. She has been rezzed every day for many years but you never know.   

Edited July 29, 2020 by Chic Aeon

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

One thing that I DO KNOW is if you have the UUID of the object you don't want to lose, you are more likely to get it back by sending in a support ticket.

That is only applicable to inventory textures, I believe objects in your own inventory don't get a UUID until they are either rezzed inworld or added to the inventory of an object rezzed inworld?

However, it has made me realise there is a hole in my boxing method, I have notecards of the contents of each box giving the name and type, but now I think I need to have the UUID as well.

 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

That is only applicable to inventory textures, I believe objects in your own inventory don't get a UUID until they are either rezzed inworld or added to the inventory of an object rezzed inworld?

However, it has made me realise there is a hole in my boxing method, I have notecards of the contents of each box giving the name and type, but now I think I need to have the UUID as well.

 

Actually support told me that UUID trick. Also if you have the EXACT NAME they can find a lost item  more easily (if they can find it that is). Knowing the exact name (because I had pasted it into a blog post) got a necklace back once a few years ago. That is the only item I have ever recovered  that way through support although they have tried over the years. 

 

As I said over time single items (never folders) have appeared LONG after the inventory loss. They were not in "objects" or "lost and found" or anywhere you would expect them.  They also weren't in there former place and hadn't been there (wherever there was) when I last cleaned my inventory (so not me dragging something to an incorrect folder).  It is extremely puzzling how this happens.  

 Now I just don't bother asking for help.    In the case of my kitty she is of course a one of a kind no copy item so has her own UUID and has been rezzed.   

 

I have plenty of "stuff" but do miss some items that are no longer with me an cannot be replaced.   

[Anna Nova]

There is a product called CTS Archive that I use.  It is basically a way of boxing things up and keeping them in-world.  I am not advocating it for clever people like Chic and Prof, but it can help others I think.  It is fairly expensive though, and only gets you to the 'boxed and rezzed in-world' stage.  I am not connected, other than as a customer, to the creator.