Yesterday, I was using Unreal Engine to make an FPS platform and I had it loaded onto an external hard drive (I’m on macOS). Throughout making it I have a habit of just saving it every 3 minutes (using Save All) and when I closed the project for the night I made sure to click Save All and then I closed the project. When I got back on today, the project doesn’t appear in the Epic Games Launcher so I check the folder and my project is gone. The file with the project name is there but it is completely empty.
Hello there @aSushiLegend!
That is a very unfortunate situation. From what you are describing, the most likely outcome is that the link between UE and your external drive was interrumpted, leaving your folder either corrupt or empty.
Possible way for recovery would involve checking for any other .uproject files still present. As well, check for any backups or autosaves. Possible locations are:
YourProject/Saved/Autosaves/
YourProject/Saved/Backup/
Library/Application Support/Epic/UnrealEngine/Saved/
Users/YourUser/Library/Application Support/Epic
Last steps would be to check Trash, or test with any file recovery tools. Hopefully, part of the missing data can be retrieved.