My Minecraft world appears corrupted: what should I do?
World corruption in Minecraft usually manifests as: chunks appearing as holes in the map, items or builds disappearing after a restart, or the server crashing on startup with a "Could not load level" error.
First, stop the server and create a backup immediately. Even a corrupted world is better than no world; a backup captures the current state before anything gets worse.
For chunk-level corruption (holes or missing builds): the affected chunks can often be deleted individually to force regeneration. Use a tool like MCEdit or Amulet to identify and delete the corrupted region files, then restart. The deleted areas regenerate as fresh chunks; any builds in those chunks are lost, but surrounding terrain survives.
For "Could not load level" startup crashes: this usually means the level.dat file (the main world metadata) is corrupt. Check your backup history; the File History feature snapshots files regularly. Open File History for world/level.dat, find the most recent valid version, and restore it.
For inventory or player data loss: player data is stored in world/playerdata/. Each player has a .dat file named with their UUID. These can be restored individually from File History without affecting the whole world.
If you have scheduled backups enabled, restore the most recent backup from before the corruption appeared. This is the cleanest fix when the corruption is extensive.
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