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TheSpoi's avatar
TheSpoi
3 years ago
Solved

Corrupted save(s)

soo theres a bit of context to this ill go ahead and skip long story short, sims 4 documents deleted, recovered using a disk scanner to recover lost data after i thought "cool i got my saves back",...
pc
  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    3 years ago

    @TheSpoi  It's possible, and even likely, that your saves were corrupted during the recovery process.  Data recovery is almost never exact, even with professional services, and Sims 4 saves are much more sensitive to bad or missing data than a more standard file like a document.  If the game can't read the save, there's really nothing else you can do.

    Having said that, it's worth testing every single save, including backups, to see if you can find a working one.  Any save file that ends in .verx is a backup, slightly older copy of the .save file with the same name.  These backups can be renamed so the game will recognize them, for example Slot_00000002.save.ver1 can become Slot_00000021.save instead.  The format has to be precisely that: Slot_ followed by an eight-digit hexidecimal (digits 0 to 9, a to f) number followed by .save for the game to read it.

    And just in case this is the issue, make sure that the saves are inside the Saves folder within the Sims 4 folder the game is actually reading.  Here's how to find that folder:

    https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
3 years ago

@TheSpoi  It's possible, and even likely, that your saves were corrupted during the recovery process.  Data recovery is almost never exact, even with professional services, and Sims 4 saves are much more sensitive to bad or missing data than a more standard file like a document.  If the game can't read the save, there's really nothing else you can do.

Having said that, it's worth testing every single save, including backups, to see if you can find a working one.  Any save file that ends in .verx is a backup, slightly older copy of the .save file with the same name.  These backups can be renamed so the game will recognize them, for example Slot_00000002.save.ver1 can become Slot_00000021.save instead.  The format has to be precisely that: Slot_ followed by an eight-digit hexidecimal (digits 0 to 9, a to f) number followed by .save for the game to read it.

And just in case this is the issue, make sure that the saves are inside the Saves folder within the Sims 4 folder the game is actually reading.  Here's how to find that folder:

https://sims4.crinrict.com/eng/2018/07/how-to-find-your-user-folder/

  • TheSpoi's avatar
    TheSpoi
    3 years ago

    well although i acknowledge that corruption happens, id peg it as highly unlikely in this case, i hadnt written any data to my HDD after the deletion to prevent writing over any possible files i could restore

    also i should mention i recovered many other files which 90% were completely fine, it just seems like some other variables are missing causing the game to not register these files

    (and yes i tested every file just to check, it seems something is missing causing them to not load but im not sure what exactly)

    ill give another whirl at it and see if i can get *something* to work, though unlikely as it still seems im missing something in the documents folder

    • puzzlezaddict's avatar
      puzzlezaddict
      Hero+
      3 years ago

      @TheSpoi  I understand what you're saying, but what I'm saying is it takes very little to corrupt a save beyond the point it can be recovered.  Even a less-than-perfect recovery process could be the culprit: the data might be untouched on the HDD but not read properly or completely.  I don't know enough about the process to speculate further.

      Regardless, the bottom line is, if the game can't read the saves, there's nothing else you can do.  The issue shouldn't be anything in the Sims 4 user folder (the one in Documents > Electronic Arts), but if you want, you can start fresh with a new folder and see whether that works better.  Move the existing Sims 4 folder out of Electronic Arts and onto your desktop, start the gane to create a new folder, and move over the old saves, including any backups you want to test.  Saves can be swapped between folders without adding anything else; there wouldn't be a separate file or folder in the old Sims 4 folder that you'd need to make these saves work.

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