How do I recover Vortex after C: Drive Crash

[Wrayth09041968]

Hello All,

 

Recently my SSD C: drive failed and I lost my desktop, everything under Users etc.

 

All my games were installed on a second SSD (D:) or my 2TB HDD (E:) under a "Games" folder. I now have a replacement SSD installed for the C: drive and have had to reinstall Windows 11.

 

Vortex does not give you install location options and automatically installs itself on the C: Drive (which is disappointing for such an otherwise slick utility). Before I started using my last installation of Vortex (now lost), I told it to store my mods on the D: Drive (2nd SSD) in a "Vortex Mods" folder which I have now moved under my Games folder on the 2TB HDD Drive (E:). That is where my Vortex Mods folder is now sitting with all my Skyrim Mods in it.

 

I have now reinstalled Vortex and it says I have no managed games when it was used to manage Skyrim SE. Can I somehow tell Vortex that it already has mods installed on my PC but on the E: drive?

 

EDIT: I just tried the Vortex Settings -> Downloads and tried to repoint the Download folder to the Vortex Mods folder which I moved to my E: drive. Annoyingly it says that the folder must be empty so it seems that Vortex - slick as it seemed to be - doesn't have the facilities to allow you to recover from a C: Drive crash and assumes that you are setting the Downloads folder without any mods already installed. I don't want to have to delete and then search for them all over again on Nexus Mods and re-download them as I had loads of mods installed with all their pre-requisities.

 

Kind Regards

[AugustaCalidia]

1. Vortex does give you install location options. Go to the download folder and get the custom installer.

 

2. In regard to the mods staging folder problem, there's a very simple renaming dance you can do. It works like a charm and preserves all of your mods.

[Wrayth09041968]

1. Vortex does give you install location options. Go to the download folder and get the custom installer.

 

2. In regard to the mods staging folder problem, there's a very simple renaming dance you can do. It works like a charm and preserves all of your mods.

 

Okay thanks for point 1. I never noticed that when downloading Vortex originally. I've uninstalled Vortex and will use the Custom installer now.

 

As regards point 2. I have no idea of what this "renaming dance" is that you speak of. I would ask you for details of how to do this but at this point it would now be moot, because while trying to sort out the problem in Vortex it complained about mods being installed by another instance of Vortex and then deleted EVERYTHING!!. So now I have to start installing my Skyrim Mods all over again and I don't think I can be bothered at this time after spending weeks trying to get them to work in the first place.

 

Thanks for your reply though.

[Zanderat]

Assuming that this isn't a case of user error, Vortex should not be silently deleting already downloaded mods.

[Tannin42]

The installation directory doesn't really matter as it contains only the application itself, no data, so that directory only contains the stuff you can get back by reinstalling Vortex anyway.

 

Application data, that is settings, meta information about mods, profiles and so on, is stored in c:\users\...\appdata - the first or second directory you should include in every backup anyway.

If this is lost, what you can recover is limited.

 

Assigning the download and staging folder to what you previously had _should_ work though.

Vortex looks for the file "__vortex_downloads_folder" when you assign the download folder. If you get the message "The destination folder has to be empty", that would indicate that that file does not exist in the directory you selected.

And that means either you selected the wrong directory or you were using an absolutely ancient version of Vortex.