Lost Profile

[King Rei]

Recently Formatted my PC (twice)... I all my profiles for ATS. But I check my steam cloud and see a bunch of backed up files under the extensions .cfg and .sii. "profiles/*number*/config.cfg"

Is there a way to restore these to my game files in order to get the profile back? Thanks.

[mojo_musica]

Those are not profile files, if you haven't been using the Steam Cloud for your saves and you have formatted your PC without backing up your documents folder, then your profile is most likely gone. Profile back-ups have the extender ".bak", look for those.
If you have access to your documents folder from before formatting you can transfer the ATS folder to your new PC and carry on with the original profile.
Formatting a PC hard drive removes everything on the hard drive. Re-installing or updating Windows can retain all your programs and documents, but nothing is better than backing-up essential files to an external drive, or even better, off-site storage.
Losing precious data is the only lesson you need to teach you about the importance of back-ups.
If you have to start again from scratch, there are XP and money mods, or save editors to help you get started, if you would rather not grind from ground zero. Look in the guides for help.

[Trucker_71]

Don't use cloud.

[mojo_musica]

Originally posted by Trucker_71:

Don't use cloud.

But if OP had used the cloud, he wouldn't be asking this question, would he?
Just because, in your opinion, the cloud is no good, doesn't mean it is no good.
If you had a bad experience, it should not mean nobody else should use it for storage, it seems to work for the vast majority of gamers on all sorts of platforms. 120 million active Steam players probably indicate it all works pretty well for them or the forums would be awash with complaints.
You can still make your own saves and back them up externally in SCS games, thankfully.
Anecdotal and personal bias is no basis for rational decisions.

[Trucker_71]

There seems to be a lot of folks losing and getting corrupt profiles, oddly, most of them were using cloud. Why would you allow someone else to have and control your data? The best place for your info is where YOU have control of it.
The game saves profiles quite nicely all in order of game versions, copy the recent ones to a different physical drive & be your own boss.

[King Rei]

Sadly I guess there's no getting back those hours I spent. Appreciate the help and advice from all. I'll make sure to backup my profiles manually in the future. Thanks Folks

[Madkine]

Trucker_71 I guess you are ignoring all the threads were someone wasn't using the cloud and formatted their PC. If seen a fair amount of profiles lost both ways.

Most 'cloud' losses have been because people haven't actually turned it on, rather than an actual failure.
Old profiles weren't automatically set to use the cloud and had to be manually activated in game. I'm not sure I've seen a single thread on here were the cloud legitimately corrupted save files.
Most are like this one were they assumed the profile was configured for cloud storage and some were the user chose the wrong option when presented with a choice about using the local or cloud file.

[DSwan]

Originally posted by Trucker_71:

... Why would you allow someone else to have and control your data? The best place for your info is where YOU have control of it.
The game saves profiles quite nicely all in order of game versions, copy the recent ones to a different physical drive & be your own boss.

If registered on Steam, someone else has your data (surprise! Steam Cloud). Your IP address, approximate location, browser string agent (tells your OS and browser), and other data is logged. So let's be more precise here and not mix concepts; you are advocating that Steam Cloud isn't used for saved backups in ETS2 and ATS. Fair enough for the reason you gave. Still, I'd argue as @Madkine mentioned that alleged "cloud losses" often involve not having enabled Steam Cloud saving at all.

Now, why I'm here (not just to have an online argument ): my son did some jacking around on my computer in ATS and managed to delete my profile, Steam Cloud saved of course. It was a bit of a challenge to restore, but indeed as others have said, this was the trick for me: create a new profile with a different name, making sure to turn off Steam Cloud saving (can be done by going to Edit Profile if it did get turned on the first place). Exit Steam and restore different profile version backups until you see your original profile restored. It took me several restore attempts before my desired profile finally showed up.

I can't really advocate for having it on or not except under this detail: users that explicitly backup their profile backup folders are fine turning it off if they trust the integrity of their backup source, e.g. Google Drive, MS OneDrive, two external HDD's / thumbdrives, or NAS with RAID1.

SCS knows that most users aren't backing up their important files like they should be, so that's why Steam Cloud saves exist in the first place.

[mojo_musica]

Steam Cloud saves are generally reliable, if they weren't providing a robust network save for their 120 million active monthly users, I think we would have heard about it by now. I have used it for all my games more or less since they introduced it and can confirm it is well worth using, as well as doing your own back-ups off site, or at least outside your PC.

I have seen a certain amount of scare-mongering on here from people who are implacably opposed to Cloud saves, but that is simply ideological, and not based on any failings or technical problems.
If you think "they" are out to steal your identity, it's too late, if you are using the Internet, you're already fully signed up for data-mining by every site and device you use. Don't think a using a VPN or private web-browser pages are doing anything to hide you.