PSA: Manually Backup your Game Saves to be Safe

TwistedMexican · September 2014

I've seen a lot of lost save files, both from friends and posted here.

The best way to make sure you keep a game save is to also periodically quit the game, go to your Documents folder > Electronic Arts > The Sims

Right-click the "saves" folder and select "copy". Then paste it somewhere else. (Perhaps make a "Game Backups" folder in your Documents)

This will put those save files out of reach of the game so they can't possibly get deleted unless you delete them yourself.

If a save goes missing, you can copy it back in from your backup folder.

PeschkeGirl · September 2014

Back-ups are always a good thing! I personally don't have enough space on my computer to do this, so I just do this with my saves folder.

For save game that are broken now there is a way to get at least some of them back.

PeschkeGirl wrote: »

I had this same problem, but I found a solution. I did not have to do anything with my cache files, or anything else but my saves.

If you only had one saved game going, or only one save for that game, I am sorry to say you will not be able to get it back as it is corrupt.


                                IF you have more than one save for each game you played you CAN get your game back!

   When I started up TS4 after it crashed my game had this orange notification telling me: "The save game you are attempting to load was saved with a newer version of The Sims 4 than is currently installed. Please update in order to safely load this save game."
   After checking the forums and seeing someone had deleted their save file and a few other things, that it made that notification stop showing up on start up, I decided to do some testing to find out what was the actual cause.

   My solution was to move all of my save files from C:\Users\*Your User Profile*\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\saves
to somewhere safe (for me this was a new folder I created on my desktop) and move them back in one grouping at a time and started up TS4 each time to see if the floppy disk was back. Every other save file grouping that was NOT the corrupt save was able to be loaded and played just fine.

Now what I mean by grouping is:
"Slot_00000002.save
Slot_00000002.save.ver0
Slot_00000002.save.ver1
Slot_00000002.save.ver2
Slot_00000002.save.ver3
Slot_00000002.save.ver4"

NOTE: Save Slot 1 in my experience has always been the auto-save.

PeschkeGirl · September 2014

Also having multiple saves of your game (by hitting save as to make a second save) will help prevent losing your game as well.

TwistedMexican · September 2014

PeschkeGirl wrote: »

Also having multiple saves of your game (by hitting save as to make a second save) will help prevent losing your game as well.

Yep, I hope everyones doing that as well! I only mention this as an additional step so the game can't possibly corrupt this backup.

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PSA: Manually Backup your Game Saves to be Safe

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