Lost steam saves?

Telecaster

Telecaster

Telecaster

Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2012
Posts
5,951
Ok this isn't looking very good, I did a fresh W10 install the other day and I did what I've always done and copied the steamapps folder to an external drive, then installed steam and pasted my existing steamapps folder back into the new install.

Only difference being is this time when I fire up a game it's like it's the first time, no saves no remembered graphics/audio settings just like a fresh install.

Please don't tell me it's all gone...
 
Telecaster said:
Ok this isn't looking very good, I did a fresh W10 install the other day and I did what I've always done and copied the steamapps folder to an external drive, then installed steam and pasted my existing steamapps folder back into the new install.

Only difference being is this time when I fire up a game it's like it's the first time, no saves no remembered graphics/audio settings just like a fresh install.

Please don't tell me it's all gone...
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Don't you use steam cloud???

im 99% sure save data and settings are not in the steamapps folder

EDIT : A lot of them seem to be in different places also my documents and %AppData%

EDIT 2 : Yeah there not in the steamapps folder ( as i thought that is the game installs ) saves and settings are in the userdata folder buddy sorry to say.
 
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Yeah I don't think some games actually save theirs games under some Steam directory, it's usually somewhere in the documents (I remember backing up my NV saves from there). And not all Steam games have cloud saves, I will never forgot Dark Souls 2 (...yet the first one did :confused:)
 
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Telecaster said:
But that's how I've done it before with previous installs :/

No idea if I use the cloud or not, do you have to turn it on or is it on by default?
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It should be on by default but i think you get a option to turn it off.

Im not sure if they have changed this in the last few years but i know a friend of mine did the same to copy his games over and lost all his saves because he didn't back up the userdata folder and didn't use cloud. This was easily 2 years ago. So it's been like this since then atleast.
 
I've just opened the userdata folder and there are saves in there, obviously I can't tell what they all are because they're just identified with random numbers, so why is steam not picking these up when I launch a game?

Edit: I've also found a cloud setting which shows it enabled I think, so I'm hoping all isn't lost here.
 
Telecaster said:
I've just opened the userdata folder and there are saves in there, obviously I can't tell what they all are because they're just identified with random numbers, so why is steam not picking these up when I launch a game?
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How many games have you tested? As i said not all saves are in there. Just the majority of them :). I would try a few different games and it is silly that they are done with numbers. What game is it you are trying to play ?
 
Where games saves are stored is different for every game. Some use the cloud, some don't. Some store saves in %users%\appdata, some in my documents, some in userdata.

Whilst universal cloud saves would be great - for some games it makes no sense or would be really hard to implement e.g. skyrim where 5GB+ saves folders are not uncommon and 10MB save files are the norm. On my upload speed that would take 2 minutes per save to upload. When the game first came out it would have taken 10 minutes per save.

From what it sounds it is very possible that your saves are gone. Sorry :(
 
harry5522 said:
How many games have you tested? As i said not all saves are in there. Just the majority of them :). I would try a few different games and it is silly that they are done with numbers. What game is it you are trying to play ?
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So far Just Cause 3 and PCars aren't finding anything, was going to try JC2 but that won't even launch :rolleyes:
 
Telecaster said:
So far Just Cause 3 and PCars aren't finding anything, was going to try JC2 but that won't even launch :rolleyes:
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JC3 saves to my documents. As does Pcars.

With JC2 right click it in your steam library go into properties -- Local files and verify integrity of game cache. This may help solve the issue, usually does :) as a few files may have failed to carry over.
 
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Yeah well they're gone then. I'm not going to cry over spilt milk, 100s of hours gone but what is confusing is that I've done two or three fresh windows installs before and not lost a thing, so why has it gone wrong this time.

BTW saving stuff all over the bloody PC in random locations is retarded beyond belief. For something that should be so simple and idiot proof they sure do make hard work of things.

Not sure I can actually be bothered to play them all again TBH.
 
Telecaster said:
Yeah well they're gone then. I'm not going to cry over spilt milk, 100s of hours gone but what is confusing is that I've done two or three fresh windows installs before and not lost a thing, so why has it gone wrong this time.

BTW saving stuff all over the bloody PC in random locations is retarded beyond belief. For something that should be so simple and idiot proof they sure do make hard work of things.

Not sure I can actually be bothered to play them all again TBH.
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It is annoying :) It's all down to the developers at the end of the day sadly. A universal location would be best but doubt it will ever happen.

I use cloud whenever possible. And have steam and all my games installed on another drive so i have no need to copy them over when i need to reinstall i just tell steam to see the drive again. Though still need to go into documents ect and quickly make sure i have no saves in there before i do fresh windows. Might be worth considering doing something similar.
 
Whenever I fresh install I keep the backup of the last install for a couple of months just in case there is something important stored in there. I also copy the contents of my documents over from one install to another.
 
Before you lose all hope look in

"Drive"/Steam/userdata/"long number"/"relevant game number".

Look in both remote and local folders. Saved me with dying light that trick.

You will need to copy the saves in that folder back to the normal games save dir. Do it when Steam aint running though
 
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