Go to Preferences/File/Export to: Copy the link and post it here as text on your next reply.

Open File manager and tell us what is the drive letter of that external hard drive now and does it changes from time to time. It can if you have something else plugged in to the usb ports.

Thanks for the help Tomasc.

Here is what Export to shows:

D:\Users/Mauro/Documents\Cyberlink\Powerdirector\

. . . which was not what I had put down as the folder to export to, but anyways, I went in that folder and I can't find any .pds file. - no projects there whatsoever.

There are subfolders of the previous versions of PD I had (14) and the others that got automatically updated and dumped by subscribing to PD365 (18,19 and 20). But every sub-folder I open, nothing to be found. For example there are "my gradients", my particles, my PinPs, my strokes, etc...


As for the USB ports in my computer, nothing plugged in, other than a wireless mouse/keyboard.
The hard driveds I plug in, they all show as a F:

Thanks!

The first time I save a project in any PD version, I look at the path and change it from the default My Documents to My Documents\CyberLink\PowerDirector\20.0 for PD21/365. This is to keep the path different for each version of PD. It may be possible that a different path was used for the .pds files. Try this: Do a file search for .pds in Documents first to see the paths. If this is not successful then do the search D:\ . Do a search in C:, F: . Unless the pds file was saved in a volatile area like the autosave folder that some users have mistakenly used for saving project files, they should not be deleted. Go to the Preferences/Project/Autosave. Look at the autosave path to be sure that that is not the path you used to save your project (.pds) files.

Load something on the timeline. Do a File/Save as… and note the path. Is it the path you always use?? Or is it to a different folder.

Anyway trying to figure out why your project files disappear or get deleted without your intervention.

Hi Tomasc,

I did the search and they are nowhere to be found. I searched for any .pds file in all 3 drives, nothing. Just vanished.

Then I opened PD and threw some pictures in there, saved the project, it went to the same folder as before and it still shows in there.

How can 20 odd projects just disappear?!

And still, whatever .pds file I copy and past into that folder from an external hard drive, as soon as I close all programs and files, when I reopen, it disappears again, can not be found in a search in entire computer....

M.

You may not be alone with disappearing project files. Here is a recent post where all of the project(.pds) files disappeared. It seems to have happened to at least two users and at least one has the solution: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/108031.page .

Go to the autosave folder and look at the extension of the files. You may have only a few since you haven’t worked on the project for a while. Let us know what the extension is. Change that extension to .pds and it should work.

In your normal save folder, check for your project file name. Since the extension is not .pds, change one of them and see if it works okay now as a project file.

If the above solves the issue, then you need to let CyberLink support know about this. I have not seen this on my PD365 yet so I can’t report an issue that I don’t have. Let them know that the copied .pds files to the normal folder that you use disappears when you close the program. That does seem strange and needs to be fixed.

Thanks Tomasc,

I checked the cache files. I have PD 21,20,19,18 and 14.

There were no cache files for 21, 20 and 18. Empty. There were many in 19, but none of the project I was looking for.

All files are .pds

I also checked the normal folder, everything is .pds

All gone, about 100-200 hours of work which I don't think I can re-create the way it was done in the first time.

The other issue about my .pds files that I paste into my normal project-saving-folder and then they disappear as soon as I close PD still continues. I wrote to CL a few days ago but havent heard back.

The .pds files that I save when they are on the PD, that's no problem - I can save them and they stay there. But the ones I import from another hard drive, they disappear faster than my income on canadian taxes.

Thanks for the help Tomasc, much appreciated! I guess I am back to the story board and starting from scratch...

This is something that is very strange as moving a pds file from my PD17 folder to my PD365 folder and/or renaming it does not delete it. Hope that the Cyberlink support can help figure out why it happens on your pc. No other user has reported your exact problem yet. Maybe the update patch or the original installation file was corrupted.

Quote Thanks Tomasc,

I checked the cache files. I have PD 21,20,19,18 and 14.

There were no cache files for 21, 20 and 18. Empty. There were many in 19, but none of the project I was looking for.

All files are .pds

I also checked the normal folder, everything is .pds

All gone, about 100-200 hours of work which I don't think I can re-create the way it was done in the first time.

The other issue about my .pds files that I paste into my normal project-saving-folder and then they disappear as soon as I close PD still continues. I wrote to CL a few days ago but havent heard back.

The .pds files that I save when they are on the PD, that's no problem - I can save them and they stay there. But the ones I import from another hard drive, they disappear faster than my income on canadian taxes.

Thanks for the help Tomasc, much appreciated! I guess I am back to the story board and starting from scratch...

Hi,

Have you researched any other avenues that might make files disappear? Are any other files similarly affected?

Apart from one other post, which I understand is different - in that the .pds files are there but empty - I can't remember another instance of .pds file going missing "automatically".

Without knowing your system, Win 10 or 11 etc, in looking at possibilities you might consider:

Wrongly configured 3rd party virus software
Windows Defender malfunctioning
A problem with your windows account
A problem with Windows Storage Sense
A faulty Windows update
Icon cache corrupted

All these are known to cause a similar sounding problem. A google search comes up with this sort of thing:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-keeps-deleting-my-files/55d95dcb-020a-45f2-8f67-5088b462abe3
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-files-are-being-delete-automatically/dd47ef19-aedf-47f2-ab6a-cb3216d93ce3
https://www.intowindows.com/how-to-prevent-windows-10-from-automatically-deleting-files/
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/rebuild-icon-clear-thumbnail-cache-windows-10


Be interesting to know how you get on and whether support can offer any solution.

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 Apart from one other post, which I understand is different - in that the .pds files are there but empty - I can't remember another instance of .pds file going missing "automatically".

I recall a few recent posts. Like this recent thread a user claimed pds disappeared too, no real resolution other than his path is very questionable. https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/84956.page

Another recent post with copied pds files apparently being deleted, https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/83546.page#345097

In this post OP stated export path of "D:\Users/Mauro/Documents\Cyberlink\Powerdirector\" again very strange unless several "/" typos. I don't believe the thread ever stated full path to what was called "normal project-saving-folder".

Several other posts of disappearing pds files but in those cases I recall users for some reason saved their pds files in the volatile PD autosave folder and several other posts which are rather old and maybe not applicable.

Jeff

Thank you for your help, and thank you Tomasc and JL_JL,


I read your link that you were exchanging with Big Wullie back in 2016, and that is pretty much what happened to me.
Now, I read your note to him telling him to go to the Recentfiles.ini (notepad) and I found a record of my project there (PD 20).

What does that mean? It's just a list with many projects, the one I am looking for is there, but it does not look like I can open it?

It shows a path to my saving folder, but when I go to my saving folder, it is not there. The path is right, but nothing is in there.

I think it is what JL_JL also wrote to someone else, these projects went to an autosave place that is volotile and PD just simply deleted it. I think it is crazy a program would do such thing.

As for my computer, I have no issues at all, no other programme deletes any files. Everything runs smoothly.

M.

It happened to me like this, normally saved project files and also the autosave changed the name extension, so they were shown as a strange document, not as “project name.pds”
After almost losing my project in progress with hours of work, I found the cause, it was just renaming the extension of the names of the last saves.
“Not sure” fink to me it had a quick PD update. did not change the version that solved the problem. XEON-E5-2680 v4 / Mem. 16GB DDR4
M.2 NVME 512Gb / 2-SSD Sata3 1TB
AMD RX570 / Display Philips 272V8
Windows 11_64Pro / PD22/365

You can choose Default autosave in setting and also name should be different in each project.

you should try project saver tools which is available on internet