There are several things you can try (although I don't know why your projects would have disappeared in the first place).

Was your project folder on the C: drive or on a different drive? If it was on the C drive, was it in the PD11 folder (C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerDirector11) or in a library folder like My Videos?

Did you ever make backups of your projects or make a system/disk image of that drive? Did you save copies of any of them up on a cloud drive or external drive?

Have you checked the recycle bin or Windows File History to see if the files might be there? File History should give you several versions of each file if it was enabled and was tracking the folder where your projects were located.

Have you checked the folder where PD autosaves projects? The location and autosave period are located in Preferences (gear icon), Project.

Download a free, fast disk search utility like *Everything* and let it scour all your drives and see if you can locate the projects by name.

Download a free file recovery tool like *Recuva* and have it look for all files on the drive where the projects were located and see if it can find and recover any of them.

Hopefully at least one of these approaches will work. Please make backup copies as soon as you locate the projects so you won't have to go through this again. An even better approach is to use the Pack Project Materials option from PD's File menu to pack the project AND source clips to either an external drive, DVD/Blu-Ray or the Cyberlink Cloud.

Good luck!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Lost my PowerDirector 11 Projects After Upgrading to Power Director 13

The way but easy to find any file, use the magnifying glass of the Explorer, select the drive (HD) type the name of a project / magnifying glass.

If you do not remember the name type .pds files will be listed all found PD projects. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

Unfortunately these steps have not worked. Any other suggestions?

Wow. If you tried the utilities I mentioned and none of your files could be found, I don't know that there's anything else you can do.

If a deleted file recovery app like Recuva couldn't find ANYTHING that you're looking for, that implies that the files/folders aren't actually deleted because it ONLY searches for deleted items.

If Everything couldn't find ANY your missing folders or files, the only thing I can think of is that you may not have permission to see them. You can try going to the Folder Options in Windows Explorer and check the box called "Show hidden files..." which is listed under "Hidden files and folders"

The only other thing I can think of is that they're stored under a different user account. Is it possible that you're trying to access those files from a different account than the one you created them in? For example, did you have to create a new user profile/account to fix some problems with your old account?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

I think I had trouble logging into Power Director 13 to download new templates so I created a new login, but would that cause existing files to become invisible? If so, how do I get them back? Or is there any chance that some how they are "in the cloud" (even though I didn't set up a cloud account)?

I appreciate your help very much.

I think we're talking about different things. You don't "log in" to PowerDirector because it's an installed program on your computer. I think you're referring to the DirectorZone website, and changing your login there won't affect anything on your computer.

What I was talking about is a "User Account" on your computer. When you set up a new Windows computer, you have to create a user account and most of your personal files and settings are stored there. You can see the user accounts on your computer by using Windows Explorer and going to C:\Users\. You'll see folders called Default, Public and at least one that's your user account. That's where your missing video files were probably stored.

If you had to create ANOTHER user account on your computer for any reason and your PD projects were in the folders of the original account, then you might not be able to "see" any of those files if you were logged in to the other account. If you never took the step of creating more than one user account then none of this applies to your situation.

I'm afraid that nothing would magically be "in the cloud" if you didn't set up a cloud account, so the only other thing I can suggest is to ask a tech-savvy friend or a computer repair servcice to do a forensic search for your missing files. It's not possible for files or folders to disappear without a trace, and someone with experience in these issues would be your best bet at trying to recover them.

Good luck!

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

I appreciate the reply. We did not set up another user account on the computer, and I didn't think a new account on Director Zone would cause the loss of files, but I was grasping at straws.

My husband in the tech-savvy guy and he said the Recuva software searched all the drives (we have 2 external drives, 1 of which has 3 terabyte capacity that we use for my Cyber projects, Cyber complete, and all raw video and photo clips). He ran the Recuva on all drives and came up with nothing and then ran it on each drive separately (C drive and the externals). It took many hours. Is there something he might have missed? i.e. does he need to put in a particular file type to search (he might have done this, but not certain).

There are projects that I labored over so, so, so much....it is tearing me up that they could be lost forever. It has made me close to abandoning my videography, which has been a passion of mine for years now. (Sorry to vent!)

Again - any guidance is appreciated.

In my view there is two ways to clean a hard drive disk physically.

1 - Format, complete (full) write anything on the disc.

2 - After Deleted HD files, still exists, Until They are overwritten by new files saved to the hard drive.

If your case falls into one of these situations it is impossible to recover the file. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

That sounds heartbreaking.

Are you and your husband absolutely certain that you guys didn't make any back ups of your projects?

How long ago did you upgrade to PD13? It sounds like you had created some projects with it and only later discovered that your PD11 projects were missing. Again, I'm looking for a date that you could go back to if you had any kind of backup. One thing that might help is to look at where your PD13 projects are currently stored. What is the name of the folder and where is it located? You mention that you have 3 external drives - do you remember if you ever changed where PD11 was storing your projects to one of those drives?

You can try searching again using Recuva with *.pds in the Filename or path box. That will locate all deleted PD projects and would give you a clue as to where the deleted clips are.

If that doesn't help, under the Options button, click on the Actions tab and check the first 3 boxes in the Scanning section and search again. If that doesn't work, check the last box (Scan for non-deleted files) and see if you get any hits. The last resort is to check the Deep Scan box, and it will definitely take a long time but that setting has the highest chance of recovering something.

As Playsound mentioned, the files can only be recovered IF the section of disk that the data is on has not been overwritten by newer files. The longer it's been since the files went missing, the less likely it is that you'll be able to recover the files even if you can locate them.

However, if the deleted files are on an external drive that hasn't been used much or at all since the disappearance happened, then once you locate them you'll be able to get most of all of them back.

I wish I had more optimistic news, and I can't for the life of me understand why your old files would have disappeared in the first place. If we could understand that, retrieving them would be much, much easier.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

The upgrade to PD13 was done on July 4th. I noticed the other files were missing very soon afterwards. I will have my husband read your replies and ask that he take the steps you have outlined. Appreciate it....still holding out hope!

OK, 6 weeks isn't a terribly long time, but of course how much work was done on the suspect drive is the real issue.

Is PD11 still installed? If it is, you can go to Recent Files under the File menu and see where those projects were stored.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote

Lost my PowerDirector 11 Projects After Upgrading to Power Director 13

The way but easy to find any file, use the magnifying glass of the Explorer, select the drive (HD) type the name of a project / magnifying glass.

If you do not remember the name type .pds files will be listed all found PD projects.

Thank you!

I also faced the same issue. I initially edited my project in a pre-loaded PowerDirector 14, then edited it using the trial version of PowerDirector 16. When I opened the project using PowerDirector 14, there was a dialog box stating, "This project was created in a newer version of Cyberlink PowerDirector and is not supported by the current version".

Is there any way to retrieve back my old project and edit it using PowerDirector 14? I'm using it to edit a video assignment which is due in a few weeks and I really want to edit using PowerDirector 14 instead of the trial version of PowerDirector 16. Any help is very much appreciated, thank you!

Hi,

Try looking in the autosave location [look in Preferences>Project] for earlier versions of your project.

As good practice, you should always save your projects using "Save as" and give them a sequential name or number - then you can always go back a version or two and retrieve a broken project!

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

Quote Hi,

Try looking in the autosave location [look in Preferences>Project] for earlier versions of your project.

As good practice, you should always save your projects using "Save as" and give them a sequential name or number - then you can always go back a version or two and retrieve a broken project!

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

Thank you very much for your assistance! I've looked into autosave and found the earlier version of my project. Thank you once again.

Hi, I had a similar problem but with the mobile version. While I was editing a video I didn't notice that the battery was law and the smartphone turned off. Later I turned it on with 100% battery and all of my projects under the name "personal projects" disappeared. I turned it off again and turned it on but the situation was the same. I went in the folder "projects" in "Power Director" and there's only the first project I did one year ago and it doesn't even show up in the app to edit it. So I don't know what to do, maybe I should try to search in the folders on PC, I requested assistance from Cyberlink but I haven't received any response yet. I had a project I was doing for 7 months.

Quote Hi, I had a similar problem but with the mobile version. While I was editing a video I didn't notice that the battery was law and the smartphone turned off. Later I turned it on with 100% battery and all of my projects under the name "personal projects" disappeared. I turned it off again and turned it on but the situation was the same. I went in the folder "projects" in "Power Director" and there's only the first project I did one year ago and it doesn't even show up in the app to edit it. So I don't know what to do, maybe I should try to search in the folders on PC, I requested assistance from Cyberlink but I haven't received any response yet. I had a project I was doing for 7 months.

Hi,
Ideally you should post your issue under a new topic in the Mobile App forum https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/forums/show/179.page
as the desktop forum doesn't apply.

You give no details of your setup - phone, tablet, or OS so it is difficult for members to comment.
If you give as much detail as possible then members will have a better chance of helping.

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Quote


Hi,
Ideally you should post your issue under a new topic in the Mobile App forum https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/forums/show/179.page
as the desktop forum doesn't apply.

You give no details of your setup - phone, tablet, or OS so it is difficult for members to comment.
If you give as much detail as possible then members will have a better chance of helping.

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

Thanks for the advice, I'll check out the Mobile App forum.