Lost all my recipes!

I somehow lost ALL of my recipes! and no I don't have a backup.  I had desktop and a laptop using beersmith2, both running XP.  The desktop was the main computer running beersmith2.  On the desktop, I shared the beersmith2 directory over the network.  On my laptop I changed the documents directory to point to the desktops beersmith2 shared folder.  This way I was able to make changes on one computer and it would reflect on the other.  And so things were happy.

I got a Windows 8 laptop for xmas.  So I went through the process of recovering the license so I could install beersmith2 on the windows 8 laptop, and when that was all set I would get rid of beersmith on the old laptop.  So I downloaded and installed beersmith2 on the windows 8 laptop and applied the license.  All I see in the recipe folder are all of the sample recipes that come with beersmith, so I  go to change the directory to point to the desktop beersmith2 folder to pull in my recipes from the desktop computer.  Did that, beersmith says it needs to restart, so I restarted beersmith.  Its still not pulling in my recipes.  So I close beersmith on the laptop and fire up beersmith on the Desktop to verify what folders I need to map to.  My recipes are gone on the desktop computer too!  I see the same sample recipes like I just did a fresh install.  I think the hops and grains I added are gone too.  Everything, gone.  WTF just happened?!?!?!?!

Jeesh, that sounds awful. This is exactly why I cannot commit to Beersmith! Are you saying there was a folder that contained all your recipes? I am looking for where BS keeps the recipes, but cannot even find it to back it up.

I've had a similar problem. I copied my Beersmith2 recipe folder from its original location (c:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\Beersmith2) on an old computer to a shared drive on my new Win 8 computer, then changed my Document directory to point to the copy of Beersmith2 in the shared folder. It worked fine until I destroyed the new Win 8 installation installing Linux in a dual boot. After reinstalling Win 8 and re-sharing the Beersmith folder, all I can see are sample recipes that are part of the original installation. When I pointed my laptop Beersmith installation to the new shared location, it also shows only the original sample recipes, not the recipes I had been able to see when they were on the old Win XP machine.

Any ideas?

Hi,
  The "worst case" recovery process for a corrupt file in BeerSmith 2 is as follows:
  - Rename your "Documents/BeerSmith2" directory to something else like "OldBeerSmith" which saves your data
  -- NOTE in this case your directory may be different since you saved it SOMEWHERE ELSE!
  - Make sure you have the latest version of BeerSmith 2 installed from the main download page
  - Restart BeerSmith2 - which will create a new BeerSmith 2 directory with the sample recipes in it
  - You will likely have to enter your registration key again
  - Once you have BeerSmith running again, use the Open command to open your old Recipe.bsmx file
    that is now in your "OldBeerSmith" directory  and then copy/paste any recipes you need into
    your new "My Recipes" folder
  - You can do the same with Equipment.bsmx, Hops.bsmx, etc... if you have added items beyond
    those that came with BeerSmith 2
  - If you can't open one of the files (Recipe.bsmx for example), you can also try opening the numbered
    backups (Recipe1.bsmx, Recipe2.bsmx, etc...) - these contain older copies of the original.
  - Let me know if you have any problems - and please keep your "OldBeerSmith" directory around
    (the one you renamed earlier) as it will have all of your data in it!

Brad

That sounds complicated. I don't see any recipe files in Documents/Beersmith2. Just a bunch of useless hoopla.

The same thing happened to me.  I was able to import all my recipes by doing what Brad said here but now I am trying to add some of the hops and grains to the list and it says I don't have any room in the cloud folder.  But I am not putting them in the cloud folder.  Any idea on how to fix this?

I did find an old backup file I had created when I converted all of my promash recipes to beersmith.  So I only lost about a years worth of recipes.  Plus, the LHBS I buy from keeps online records of what you buy.  So I am still going through the process of manually adding all of my recipes from the last year.  Unfortunately, I can not recover the notes I made, and OG/FG etc.

I think there is a bigger issue here.  Why on earth would beersmith on one computer completely overwrite source files on another computer?  This had to have been what happened to me.  I took a virgin beersmith install on a laptop and changed the directory to the desktops network shared beersmith folder.  Just after doing that and only that action, beersmith on the desktop now appeared like it was just installed.  Everything gone.

Now, I'm no software programmer/developer so there might be some technical reason for this behavior, however from a users point of view this is completely asinine.  When changing an applications source directory, that new source directory should not be completely overwritten with data.    In my profession, I deal with moving large amounts of customer data to various databases all over the world, and if something as simple as changing a source directory on one system destroyed the source data on the other system, that would be considered a major bug and likely a severe security flaw and the application would be shelved.  Luckily, we are dealing with beer recipes in this case and not financial or medical info.

At the very least there needs to be a bigger warning in beersmith when changing the documents directory.  Currently when changing the documents directory in beersmith you do get a message that contents in the old folder will not be deleted, and contents in the new folder will be over written.  I did not take this to mean the entire source directory would get wiped out.  I thought it meant files would get overwritten as changes are made, which makes more sense.  The new warning should advised users that data could be lost and to make sure a backup is done prior to making the change.  Maybe I should post something in the bugs section.

I would think that each recipe would have its own save file. That way everything wouldn't get corrupted at once.

Consider the possibility that the problem is in Windows 8. Mine worked fine for years on Win XP and Linux, with several changes in the data file location. As soon as I tried to change with Win 8 the system blew up. Win 8 is a strange and temperamental beast.

I've got a monitor that had 1 year of OS driver support, sound card that got maybe 2, printers under 1 year. I am done. I am not a charity for Windows.

Think I fell into a similar situation although a little bit different (so maybe there's hope?).  I migrated all my data from one hard drive to an SSD.  The migration process doesn't require a reinstall of the software, but somehow all the recipes were gone.  After trying to import from my old Beersmith1 folder, I recovered a number of recipes but everything from last year seems to be lost.  If anyone has any ideas, I'd welcome the help. thanks.