How can i keep backup of my project?

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1

I want to backup all of my projects so if something happens to my PC my work wont we lost?
so when i restore it, all of my content that i imported and blueprints and all settings stays there like nothing was ever lost!

is that possible… ? and if yes then also how do i restore my backup…??
Thanks :slight_smile:

2

Hello,

that is a common “problem” for projects, so there are some solutions.
You can:

  1. get an external hard drive (they’re quite cheap) and copy your project after each day/week/whatever, or use a backup software
  2. use online services like GitHub (Epic Games itself uses this to backup / distribute their projects) or alternatives like Perforce for example

I guess these are the most common, whereas the 2nd one might cost a little bit, but is more professional and pretty safe as well :slight_smile:

Hope I could help,
have a nice day!

Regards,

3

ohkay thanks… i have an external hard drive i’ll copy my projects there…
can you tell me which directory do i have to copy…?

my projects are saved in this directory…
C:\Users\UserName\Documents\UnrealProjects\

so is this what i have to copy… i mean is this the folder i have to make backup of to ensure i loose nothing… ??

4

You only have to make a copy of your project folder. For example, i got a project name Something, inside C:\Users\UserName\Documents\UnrealProjects, all i need to do is thrown the entire project Something into another folder or a zip file, then put it into somewhere safe. Beware that even though my project is a pretty small one, it still take around 1gb to 2gb. You can keep several version of the same project in different folder at the same time too.

5

If you copy this folder, you will copy all of your projects. But this is way more than you need to copy.

Even if you are using an external harddrive, you can use “Perforce” to let UE4 copy the files to your harddrive automatically. You can tell it what files and folders it should copy and it will create versions so you can go back to an earlier version if you broke something.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/UI/SourceControl/index.html

Perforce is for free if you only use it for <= 20 people. You can find tutorials about setting it up easily in the interwebs or ask for help here/on the forum.

I guess the most important folders of a project are the source, content, saved and config folders.

1 Like
6

You especially need Config, Content and Source in that folder, as well as the .uproject file, the rest can be rebuilt by the engine. (You might want to keep Intermediate/ProjectFiles, to keep specific settings, but I’m not sure about this)

I also recommend using something like Perforce though (I haven’t used Perforce specifically, but doing that stuff manually every x hours/days isn’t really the perfect way to make backups, especially when it comes to software engineering) :slight_smile:

7

okay thanks alot… i’ll look into it… :slight_smile:

8

will it also keep my imported mesh and animation… even if i delete source files?

9

understood… will try that !!

10

The imported asset files (Animations, Meshes, Blueprints, etc.) are in the Content folder of your project :slight_smile:

11

When backing up copies of your project if you select file > package > zip up project it will reduce the size much more than to zip it manually