Backup, Backup, Backup! Learn to Export your worlds and save the tears!

No one ever wants to see their students in tears when the Minecraft project that they've poured countless hours of passion, creativity and hard work into suddenly disappears or will no longer open. 

One lesson I took to heart in my 20 years in IT is that: "Hardware is replaceable, data is not."

Files can go missing or become corrupt for lots of reasons, and Minecraft projects are not immune to the quirks of technology. Unfortunately, in my experience working as a technology worker in the education sector, I do not see many educators or students working with a best practice file management and file backup methodology. When files go corrupt or missing, even we techy people have only so many magic tricks that we can use to save the situation.  

So, what can we do? 

Well, in this post I'm going to be talking A LOT about backing up your files, but there's a few different concepts to cover, so I'm going to break down this article into several sections to help you digest it better, beat the odds, keep your files accessible...

...and most importantly, keep those students smiling. 

By the way, I'm writing this from the viewpoint of Minecraft Education, however most of these concepts and strategies are applicable to file management and backup practices in general. Apply them widely!

Create a file management system

Step One - Build a Folder Structure

The very first thing you need to do is come up with a file management methodology. File management is a lot easier than it sounds. It's basically just creating a folder structure that organizes your files by subject, while using descriptive names for your  files. 

As I've seen many students do, if you're dumping all your files and any backups into one giant basket and simply leaving the file names as whatever default the application gives them (the default "My World" in Minecraft for example), it won't make it easy to manage or keep track of them when you really need it. Many students also don't know how to use the file category filters to help track down files by date or type either, making a good folder structure all the more important. 

A typical structure I might use in a school environment will look like this: 

Now I can drop all the files associated with my Minecraft project in these folders, easily found and accessed at any time.  

Step Two - Use good naming conventions

As mentioned above, naming all your files the same thing is going to make it really hard to figure out which file you may want to restore and import without having to open them all up. That's going to be stressful AND time consuming.

Typically, I'll name my Minecraft file after the project: CastleBuild

Next, I'll give it a version number: CastleBuild_v0.01

Some people like to use dates instead, and that's perfectly fine too, but I prefer version numbers as file systems also provide the date the file was created. 

After each build session, I will change this version number (for this example let's use CastleBuild_v0.02) and export the world, so I have a running backup of my progress (but more on exporting in a moment). 

Now I'm ready to export my file to my folder structure, but first, a quick word about OneDrive backup in Minecraft Education. 

Enable OneDrive auto-backup

If your device and education institution supports OneDrive backup, enable it or make sure it's enabled in Settings>Cloud Storage. 

Letting Minecraft auto-backup worlds to OneDrive is a good start. You'll have a recourse and a backup to rely on if your device falls in a puddle or is wiped, but for corruptions and other issues, there are some very important considerations you need to keep in mind: 

1. OneDrive auto-backup overwrites your files. This means if your local storage world files somehow become corrupted, your backup files are overwritten with corrupted versions. 
   
   
2. If your IT department has enabled "Previous Versions", you may be able to find older versions of the file. Don't rely on this however... previous versions are often cleared out after a set amount of time and are often not enabled for students. 

So, what should you do to make sure you have a recoverable backup? 

Backup: Do a Manual Export and Create Redundancies

Exporting your world file to another location is imperative in ensuring you have a viable backup file to restore. To begin the process:

1. Open View My Worlds. 
   
   
2. Select the world you wish to export and select Settings, scroll to the bottom on the right side pane, and select Export. 
   
   
3. Rename your file by updating the version number (if it was v0.01 before, now it will be v0.02). This ensures no files are overwritten and you have a running backup of your progress. 
   
   
4. The next part will be different depending on the device/OS platform you have, and what cloud storage you want to export it to. Below are links to my YouTube channel for the process for Windows, iOS, and ChromeOS: 
   
   Windows (PC)
   iOS (iPad)
   ChromeOS (Chromebook)

Now you have exported a .mcworld file you can import regardless of what happens. 

Why is it important to have a running backup of files? 

Backing up, appending and exporting after each build session can generate a lot of files quickly. However, this ensures that regardless of what has happened (device failure, device wipe, file corruption, accidental destruction of structures, griefing in multiplayer), you have something to fall back on. 

You can always cleanup and delete files later when you're done your project and no longer need them. 

Extra Redundancy? 

Backing up your data with at least a couple of methods of redundancy will pay massive dividends when you need it most. 

What I typically do:

• Export my .mcworld file to local storage file structure
• Local storage is automatically backed up to Google Drive
• Copy my .mcworld file to a different Google Drive cloud storage account 
• Copy my .mcworld file to a USB external hard drive

Many would say this is "overkill", but in my many years of using technology, this level of redundancy will help you sleep at night. 

Your files are already missing or corrupt, what can you do?

In this case, you have no backups and the worst has happened, your files are corrupted. Provided you have a working device that hasn't been damaged and local storage has not been wiped, you can try checking for the world files in the systems file structure. In the minecraftworlds folder will be individual folders for each world. They will not have proper names (it's a random string of letters and numbers representing each world) so you'll have to sort by date to try to locate the world in question. 

You can copy these files out and paste them into the same location on another working system. You will require IT assistance with this, as these file locations are hidden and only accessible to staff with elevated system privileges. 

Below are the file locations for Windows, ChromeOS:

Windows (Store Version)

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftEducationEditionBeta_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\minecraftWorlds

Windows (Desktop Version)

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Minecraft Education Edition\games\com.mojang\minecraftWorlds

Chromebook

Play files\games\com.mojang\minecraftWorlds

Chromebook (Alternative Location)

Play files\Android\data\com.mojang.minecraftpe/files/games/com.mojang/minecraftWorlds

iPad

My iPad/Minecraft Education/games/com.mojang/minecraftWorlds

For the record, personally I have not had any success recovering corrupted files with the above method. 

Good luck, remember to backup and happy crafting!