I was recently following some troubleshooting steps for Local and removed the docker component that Local automatically sets up via an app called VirtualBox, which it installs during setup.
Right after I did this I realized that I may have also deleted all of the databases for my sites. Turns out I did.
NOTE: If you remove a site in Local as part of testing, I suggest you do not delete the associated files as well (ie app/public etc).
Luckily, Local has a nice feature that automatically backs up all of your database tables whenever you stop a site.
Since Local stalled and wasn’t stopped properly, I did loose a little bit of data, but not too much 🙂
Thanks Clay and the Local folks for helping me figure this out (check out the forum post).
If you’ve been liking Local, but also notice it freezes up or doesn’t work sometimes, I feel you 🙂
I haven’t done this in the past, but I may look into a DB backup solution for local dev just in case of things like this (my files I save via Dropbox).
WordPress Educator Zac Gordon 