How to recover fic deleted from AO3 thatās NOT on the Wayback machine
Sharing this because I just found out about this and it blew my mind.
The short version of it is: The Wayback Machine is not the only backup/archive of AO3 content out there. Itās just the most user-friendly and immediately browsable.
THIS database on Archive.org contains most AO3 fics as text files, including plenty that are not Waybacked: https://archive.org/details/AO3_final_location
What youāll need: A browser for .sqlite3 files such as DB Browser for SQLite, an archive manager (e.g. WinRar or 7zip), good internet download speeds, and potentially a LOT of free GBs in storage space.
Not needed but heavily recommended: A download manager such as HTTP Downloader (so you donāt lose the entire download the second your internet stutters).
1. Click here to get to the archiveās files. Itās going to look something like this:
ao3_current.sqlite3 and ao3_old_files.sqlite3 are metadata files. The .zip files contain fic, most of them in simple .txt format. The metadata files tell you which fic is in which zip.
The ācurrentā metadata file is recent backups. The āoldā metadata file seems to be fics archived until 2020ish.
2. First, download either ao3_current.sqlite3 or ao3_old_files.sqlite3. Now launch DB Browser for SQlite, then File > Open Database Read-Only > open the sqlite3 file. Now click on the Browse Data tab.
3. Itās going to look like this.
4. The āFilter in any columnā field can be used for keyword searches in, well, any column of this table. Be warned, it takes a while to update, give it time, itās indexing.
5. Here I searched for all fic which gets a hit for the āAvengersā keyword (usually fandom). You can also search for a specific title, author, description, etc.
Letās try to locate the first fic on the list. Click on the field on the left - row 1, column 1.
On the right youāll see the full content of that cell. The most important thing here is the start - ao3_01. This means that the fic is located in ao3_old_files_part01.zip.
6. Download ao3_old_files_part01.zip and open it with your archive manager. Itās 5.5 GB. This will take some time.
7. There are multiple ways to find the fic within the zip file. Probably the easiest way is to use your archive managerās search/find function to locate the fic by keyword - author is a good bet here, or title if itās unique enough - and extract that. This way you donāt have to extract the entire archive. Be sure to add a wildcard operator (*) on either side of the keyword.
8. Extract the file and youāre done. Note: It will probably be in .txt format, and might be in one giant block of text. Just select-all and paste it to a proper word processor to restore the paragraph formatting.
+ I suppose if youāve got like a free TB of space you could just skip the metadata step and download all the zip files and unzip them and use a command line search tool for keywords, too. This will work with keywords like title, author and fandom that are part of the file title. The metadata file just contains additional info, like character fields, description, etc.
This isnāt a perfect remedy, there are still fics that got deleted before they could get archived here. But it seems more complete than the stuff on the Wayback Machine on average.
Important addendum: Thereās another way of accessing the .zip files.
You donāt actually have to download the zip files. You can also click on View Contents on the Downloads folder.
It will show you the contents of the zip file in your browser. Like this.
Open one of the files. The URL for the first one on the list here is
https://ia902207.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/11/items/AO3_final_location/ao3_old_files_part01.zip&file=ao3_01%2F%27Allo%20%27Allo_%20-%20Mickleditch%20-%20Lady%20in%20Waiting.txt
Everything after file= is the ficās unique file path. Remember the file path for a fic we looked up earlier by checking the metadata file? Replace everything in the URL after file= with the path you got from the cell in Step 5 and hit enter. It will now take you to the file of the fic you were looking for.
Happy fic-hunting!
