Every time there's a new update, I have to completely uninstall my game because the game tries to take 20 gb from my pc to update. Usually, I always backup my saves and tray folder onto a flash drive but the last time I did a few days ago I forgot. Whenever I do reinstall the game my saves and tray are ALWAYS there no matter what, so I just end up deleting the duplicates on my flash drive but of course the one time I forget to do the backup none of them are there when I reinstall the game. Why was it there every single time I've reinstalled the game over the past 7 years but not this time?!! IS THERE ANYWAY I CAN GET THEM BACK??!!!! I'm going to be honest I'll probably never play again if I can't get them back.
@beachfossels I've merged your post with the master thread for disappearing user content. Please see the first post on page one. Not all of it will apply to you, but it describes where to look for saves and how to do a more thorough search of your computer.
@beachfossels I'm sorry, but I think your save sare gone for good. There's nowhere else to look, unless you happen to have a very old OneDrive backup (accessible through onedrive.com) from before you disabled it. I have no idea why this happened either. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the game itself was installed into Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4, meaning the program files and user files were mixed together. But you'd know if that were the case.
Aside from that, I've seen this happen quite a few times but never been able to figure out why. Some users have had malware, and some have probably messed up without realizing it, but neither explanation covers everyone affected. All I can say is, backups are as critical as ever, because you never know when you'll run into computer trouble, and the computer almost never offers any prior warning.
@SimSeeker I've merged your post with the master thread that covers OneDrive-related issues. I had no problem removing OneDrive myself the few times I tried, through various methods. Please see the first post on page one, specifically the "I want to get rid of OneDrive" section. Feel free to ask more questions about the process, but please do try it yourself too—it's much easier if you can see what's happening on your own computer.
