Lost of project list and automatic replacement by Studio by an empty list in case of communication breakdown with one of the project present in the project list

The project list is unfortunately lost every time Studio, if misfortune, does not find a project present in the project list, e.g. in the case of a connection breakdown with an external disk (where the projects are saved). Further to a connection interruption to the external disk,  the last active project list is unfortunately and automatically lost and replaced by Studio to a new "empty" project list. All your efforts to build a workable list of projects (project description, direct access, etc.) are then lost.

 In the previous Studio version (2017), it was possible to reactivate a previous project list by overwriting the "new" empty project list  automatically created by Studio by using a copy of a previous project list previously saved.

 This trick does not work anymore with Studio 2019. Is there a way to re-use previous projects list with Studio 2019 and not lose all your past efforts to create a workable project list?