Inventory Losses

This is a reprint of a post from the SL forums as I know not many people visit there and this is a pretty important issue.

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.