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HELP: Had to "Recover" Windows and now all my BeerSmith config and recipes are missing!

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biertourist

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Work pushed a new Windows update to my Win11 machine that failed. I had to do a Windows "Repair" type recover that basically reinstalls windows with all your data remaining on the drive where it was and then to reinstall all my apps.

After reinstalling BeerSmith, of course all my apps and settings are gone.
I've tried the "Recover from Auto Backup" and "Recover from ZIP File" option and none of them seem to recover either my settings OR my recipes.


To make things more complicated I have both a corporate OneDrive and a personal OneDrive running on this machine so lots of versions of the "Documents" folder all over the place.

I made a manual backup copy of my Documents\BeerSmith3\ folder and the OneDrive version AND the \username\appdata\Roaming\BeerSmith3 folder just to be safe.


This is killing me. I previously had constant issues with BeerTools recipe and ingredient DB corruption that would lose my recipes even after emailing files back and forth with the owner, which is why I moved to BeerSmith.

Quickly feeling like I should've moved to a 100% cloud-based solution and just been done with all the software app pain and 80 gazillion folders...


Adam
 
Sounds to me like a Microsoft recovery problem or your files were corrupted during the failed update.
I upgraded to Win11 several months back and have had several updates since without a problem, so can assure you that BeerSmith works just fine afterwards if the updates install properly.
 
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All that I currently have is my old .xml file recipes that I previously exported from BeerTools back before I purchased BeerSmith, and a single .bsmx recipe from July 2022.

I am missing all of my other recipes.

Where do the recipe files get stored in the file system?
What about the equipment profile that I built is that in the file system somewhere that I could pull it out to recover it.


@BOB357 Sorry, but that's not how it works. Reinstalling Windows with a "Refresh" only touches the core operating system folders and some boot files in the root of the drive. It doesn't touch the other folders on the disk.

I still have my Documents folders and theoretically my recipe data on the disk somewhere. I'm just not where where to get them / how to recover them.


Adam
 
If I need to recreate my equipment profile manually that's not a big deal, but I really, REALLY would like to recover all of the recipes that I've created in BeerSmith.

All of my beer recipe development is captured in those recipes including the notes and it would be a tragedy to lose them.

I just don't understand the where / how to get those recipes back out of the file system.
(And obviously why restoring from the backup doesn't seem to be working.)


Adam
 
Try the following first for BeerSmith 3:
  • Open the windows File Explorer and type %APPDATA% into the nav bar at the top
  • There should be a BeerSmith3 directory under that
  • As a safety measure make a complete copy of that directory as it should have your older data in it - save it somewhere safe
  • Try opening the older Recipe5.bsmx, Recipe4.bsmx, etc... using BeerSmith File->Open within BeerSmith- these are backups of your data
  • If you find the data then select all the recipes and copy/paste it back to My Recipes
Other places to look:
  • If you had an old version of BeerSmith then some data could be under Documents/BeerSmith3 for your main user account - try copying that off and look through those files using File->Open
  • If that fails, try looking on the OneDrive->Documents/BeerSmith3 as sometimes Microsoft will move your stuff to OneDrive without your permission
  • If that fails the last resort is to search for *.bsmx on your hard drive. The locations above are the default but some users put their data in other locations for various personal reasons.
When you find the BSMX files this article I mentioned is helpful for recovering everything:
https://beersmith.com/blog/2019/01/27/sharing-beer-brewing-data-using-bsmx-files-in-beersmith/

Brad
 
Thanks Brad!

I see all the Recipe.bsmx files in the AppData\Roaming\BeerSmith3 folder.

Do each of the Recipe*.bsmx files contain just a single recipe worth of data, or are they files that contain multiple recipes worth of data?

My assumptions that I think are throwing me off here:
  • I assumed that I was looking for files that would match the beer / beer recipe's name in the BeerSmith (Sounds like that's not the case and in the file system they're generically named Recipex.bsmx)
  • I assumed that the file system would have one recipe file for each recipe that I had created and that appeared in the BeerSmith UI (It sounds like these Recipe*.bsmx files contain multiple recipes worth of data within each one?) (I probably have created 20-30 recipes natively in BeerSmith since I started using it, but I only have 5 Recipe*.bsmx files)


I'm going to save an additional copy of this folder off "just in case" and go manually open the Recipe*.bsmx files now.


Adam
 
Ok.
Opening each of the Recipe.bsmx files in the %AppData%\BeerSmith3 folders appears to just include the sample recipes that come with BeerSmith3.

Recipe4.bsmx has one recipe in it, but it's one that I created new after I did the Windows Refresh and reinstalled BeerSmith.


Adam
 
Ok. Now I'm getting somewhere!

Directly in the documents\BeerSmith3 folder (not AppData), I have a single Recipe.bsmx file with a "Data Modified" of 2019 that included 2 old recipes.

It's only two quite old recipes recovered, but it's progress.


If I understand correctly:

BeerSmith doesn't store recipes by default in individual recipe data files or files named after the name of the recipes (no BeerXMLs unless you manually export recipes to BeerXML); they get stored in the various Recipe*.bsmx files which are like a mini-database / a file that contains multiple recipes.

The newer versions of BeerSmith should be storing these files in the redirected %AppData%\BeerSmith3 folder, but prior versions may have stored them directly in the Documents directory so check for versions of Recipe*.bsmx there, too.

Now I'm off to scour for other redirected OneDrive folders and any Recipe*.bsmx files within them...

Adam
 
-Following the instructions in the article, I copy and paste the recipes that I've managed to find in all the various Recipes*.bsmx files scattered to the 4 winds of my hard drive and cloud drive into "My Recipes" -> But then where do the recipes copied to "My Recipes" actually go on the HD?

-They go into another Recipes.bsmx file, right? (Any way that I can tell which one?)



Adam
 
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biertourist said:
All that I currently have is my old .xml file recipes that I previously exported from BeerTools back before I purchased BeerSmith, and a single .bsmx recipe from July 2022.

I am missing all of my other recipes.

Where do the recipe files get stored in the file system?
What about the equipment profile that I built is that in the file system somewhere that I could pull it out to recover it.


@BOB357 Sorry, but that's not how it works. Reinstalling Windows with a "Refresh" only touches the core operating system folders and some boot files in the root of the drive. It doesn't touch the other folders on the disk.

I still have my Documents folders and theoretically my recipe data on the disk somewhere. I'm just not where where to get them / how to recover them.


Adam
Click to expand...
And Windows updates don't fail either, do they?
 
BeerSmith said:
They should be stored in the Application Data/Roaming/BeerSmith3 folder by default.

However if you want to make an easy backup once you have everything restored just do this:
https://beersmith.com/blog/2022/12/22/back-up-your-beersmith-data/
Click to expand...
My problem is definitely finding the old recipes still, unfortunately.

In the AppData/BeerSmith3 folder I have 6 Recipe*.bsmx files

The first 5 all have modified dates of 4/7/2023 (after Windows got reinstalled and after I reinstalled BeerSmith)
Recipe5.bsmx has a Date Last Modified of 3/3/2023 but only includes the default "BeerSmith 3 Samples" folder recipes. (I've opened each to verify.)

-Would Reinstalling BeerSmith on the machine and using it have overwritten the Recipex.bsmx files there and therefore the recipe data within them? (I feel like I probably should've copied those files out of that folder before reinstalling BeerSmith imaybe...)

What are the scenarios in which doing something in BeerSmith overwrites the local working Recipe*.bsmx files?


In my regular Documents\BeerSmith3 folder I did find a single Recipe.bsmx file that had a last modified date of 11/15/2019 that contained 2 recipes from back in 2019 and I recovered those at least.


I also found "BeerSmithBackup.zip" in the Documents\BeerSmith3 folder from 10/11/2020, but unfortunately it's Recipe.bsmx file also only contains the BeerSmith3 Sample Recipes.

-Any thoughts on why a backup would only contain the Samples folder?



Things get a bit weirder still: my Documents\BeerSmith3 folder has a subfolder "Beer Recipes XML" I THINK that this is a folder that I created and copied and pasted into the BeerSmith folder with all of the BeerXML files that I exported from my prior brewing software tool (BeerTools).

The weird part is that this folder seems to contain an entirely redundant set of BeerSmith folders and files within it, including 6 more Recipe*.bsmx files...?!?

-It also look like c:\users\myusername\documents\BeerSmith3\Beer Recipes XML\Recipe.bsmx is where my machine is currently writing any changes I make in BeerSmith to...!? (I opened BeerSmith then created a new dummy recipe and saved it and as soon as I do that file's Date Modified gets instantly updated.




Adam
 
I'm going to just do a full drive search for Recipe*.bsmx and open them all and see if any contain my old recipes, but it's starting to look more and more like they're just not there or the files got overwritten. (The "Date Modified" field is coming in pretty handy to differentiate these files to guess at what's in them, too.)

My last hope I think is maybe finding a backup file on the disk that might contain them.

Is there a standard filename or format that I should search for to potentially find old backups?
Does the tool do automatic backups everyonce in a while or only when manually triggered?

Adam
 
I'm running out of ideas, but one more thing to check is to make sure you are on the same login as you were originally as the data would be tied to that login/account.
 
For what it's worth, I had a guy in my home brew club who recommended that if the recipes didn't just show up automatically in BS after reinstalling it on my rebuilt machine, that I should use "Recover from Autobackup" and then if that doesn't work, to recover from an actual backup. -I can't help but wonder if restoring from the old backup that also didn't have my recipes in it ended up overwriting the local Recipes*.bsmx files, thereby erasing all my recipe files.

I definitely should've used the cloud sync feature or done manual BS backups all the time, but I was moving from BeerTools and with BeerTools you get a unique file on the disk for each and every recipe and it's obvious what they are and there's not really a scenario where it's just going to overwrite those unique files (where as the BeerSmith approach of always storing in the generically named Recipes*.bsmx file format, means losing your recipes if they get overwritten.

-I just assumed that because I've got all my FILES backed up to the cloud and that the data is in the cloud, that it means my recipes are "safe" but when an existing recipe data file gets overwritten and then synced to the cloud that does NOT provide protection. Again a pretty unique situation with every copy of BeerSmith writing data to the same six filenames by default.

-BS could be made to store each recipe in it's own unique recipe file if I manually export each recipe to BeerXML or manually save each recipe to it's own unique BSMX, but it's definitely "work".


I managed to save 3 recipes out of the various Recipes*.bsmx files and I've luckily got 4 more physically printed out so I can re-enter them in BeerSmith, but I've still lost a ton of recipes.

I think there's definitely changes that BeerSmith could make to recipe storage on the file system that would make it more resilient to such data losses and individual, uniquely named recipe files would certainly move in that direction.


Adam
 
In the future if this ever happens again, I'd definitely copy all my Recipes*.bsmx files off somewhere else before reinstalling BeerSmith. Definitely a lesson learned.
 
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