Recovering Sim.files/Saves with Recuva...

Goodywood

So I deleted all my saves and sims a few months ago (don't ask why....long story), but I've recently regretted doing it. So I found a program that recovers deleted files. I was able to recover some of my Sim.files that I wanted and a few saves that I wanted. I also recovered most (if not all) of my screenshots.

All the files I recovered were in "excellent" state (not overwritten). The program says it was recovered fully, but when I place certain Saves and Sim.files into my TS3 folder they don't work or don't show in game. I know that one Sim.file can corrupt all the Sim.files so I started using one at a time and I only got 3 files to show in game. And with the Saves, it won't load, I get the error message during the loading screen.


Anyone ever do this with a recovering program? I was wonder if there was a way I could open the files in my Saves and get the Sims out (which is all I want). Though I honestly have no clue which file has the households/sims in them.

igazor

Probably not, I'm afraid. Saved games cannot be opened up in utility programs to look inside like we can with, for example, sims3packs.

The only thing I can think of is to put the homeworld nhd file of one of those recovered saves into a an already existing game save (start and save a new one if necessary) and try to travel there with NRaas Traveler in place together with Overwatch and ErrorTrap. If you can arrive safely in that world as a destination, you may be able to find the sims you were looking for in it. I'd say the expected success rate of such an experiment would be pretty low, though. Recovered files tend to withstand damage as a result of having been deleted. Often things like Word documents and even pictures can survive the experience, but something as fussy and with so much data in it as a saved game, probably not.

I take it you don't or didn't have any kind of backup system going from before the deletion of these files?

Goodywood

Well not these saves I didn't. But I do have plenty of backup saves that I've stored on portable hard drives.

I just want to save 2 Sims. I have their photos and could try recreating them but I want to try and get the originals if I can.

I will try what you said and let you know how it turns out.

Goodywood

@igazor It didn't work. I didn't even see the save/world as an option to visit in Traveler's menu.

Goodywood

OMG! I got it to work!

What I did was start a fresh TS3 folder again, put the save in the folder before launching the game and then when the game launch I made a copy of the save in the main menu and the copy loaded.


I'm so happy!

Thank you @igazor for helping!

igazor

(deleting now outdated condolences)
Congrats, good job on getting that world recovered!

Goodywood

Yes I did move it there, and actually I selected the world that was installed, but I don't think it was the Save, however it did crash when they were traveling, so maybe it was idk (?). But anyway, I got it working with the method I did above somehow. I don't know how it worked, but I'm happy it worked lol

Goodywood

igazor wrote: »

(deleting now outdated condolences)
Congrats, good job on getting that world recovered!

@igazor I hope it can work for other Simmers who have the same issue I had.

Karritz

The thing I do, and I do it often now because I can. I have a Big Game with a few worlds in it and I play that using Traveler mod to move between worlds.

Then I'll take a rest from that game and start a new game with new sims and after a while I'll decide to add them to the Big Game.

So I launch the Big Game, and send a sim to the world I have used for the game I want to include in the Big Game.

Then once I have had a Sim travel to that world, I send them back to where they came from. Save and close. Shut Sims down completely.

Then I replace the .nhd file for that world in the Big Game with the .nhd file of the game I want to merge into the Big Game.

So far it's worked every time. I suspect I will have to do it differently if I already have an instance of that world in my Big Game. I'll have to save the household to the library and place them into the existing version of the world when I have it active.

ciane

I have managed to play old saves that would NOT show up as playable after getting a new computer or after restores. (They were grayed out.) I load a game in the appropriate world and "save as" whatever. Then I quit and replace the .nhd in that new save folder with the .nhd from the old save folder. I've done this to add university set ups I like to other worlds and I've also used this method when I've reinstalled my sims on a new computer, but the new computer wouldn't load the old sims 3 folders or their saves. I'm glad you got it to work. For some reason the .nhd files are more resilient, probably because it's just one file.

JoannaSimmer

How you recovered the files with Recuva? Because I want to recovered mines :(

Goodywood

@JoannaSimmer


Recuva can recover deleted files. When you delete a file (even in the recycle bin) your computer doesn't delete it instantly, but it is still stored somewhere on your hard drive.




Did you recently delete some files?

JoannaSimmer

I format my pc :/ and i forget to pass to pen drive but i made a backup and i put in my desktop but it's no their because i format my pc ..

Goodywood

@JoannaSimmer Okay well go on and use Recuva.

Here is the link: https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva/download/standard

It is not 100% guaranteed that you will get the files you want back, but there is a good chance.

Here is a video on how to use Recuva: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeEICG0zWqY


I'm still here to help you, so let me know how everything is going and feel free to ask me anything. I'll try to help the best I can.

InfraGreen

I'm more shocked at someone getting Recuva to work.