Recover a deleted game

[Zip Nolan]

Hi all, I just deleted my game by mistake. I meant to delete a survival game but delted my normal game instead. I had worked on my normal game for several months and about 400 hours.
Is there anyway I can recover this? I have sent a message to support but was wondering if anyone know how to fix this. Sweating a bit here. :)

[bobFromReboot]

No. You will have to live with your mistake. First you had to hold the button, then hold it again on a confirmation screen. Pay more attention.

[Cranky-Cat]

Gaming at 2am has its drawbacks... I've *almost* done that.

It's best to copy your save game folder from C:\Users\Cornell\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS (or wherever) to a backup folder regularly or at least before any potentially game changing decisions. If you have a PC backup somewhere then that might be something to look for too.

[Unit 744]

Good day.

I do not own NMS, but I have recovered deleted saves from other games, so this is worth a shot:

Note: this only applies to windows PCs.


WARNING: backup your NMS save folder now if you already started a new game, else this may delete your new game.


1. Locate your NMS saved games folder. I do not own the game, but another post states the folder is here:

C:\Users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS

If you cannot see the "roaming" folder, follow the steps here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files


2. Select the saved games FOLDER (without opening it), right click on the saved games folder, and select properties.

3. On the new window that opens, select the "previous versions" tab.

4. It may take some time to populate the list, wait 30-60 seconds.

5. If windows saved any older versions of your saves folder, you will see them in this list. Locate one that you are confident is timestamped before you deleted your game. Then click once on the one you want to restore, and click "restore".

If you do not see anything in this list, see bottom of post.

6. If you look at your saves folder, it should now contain your old save!

If you restored to the wrong time, you should be able to repeat these steps and try again (though I've never done that).


If the previous versions list is empty, then I'm afraid there is nothing you can do. This method should work for any folder (e.g., other games' saves), so at least you know how to recover things now!


Good luck, hope you can recover it.

Posted via IPhone. Please forgive any spelling or grammatical mistakes.

[taibevazaha]

If you just did a normal delete it might be in your recycle bin.
if not in there, (Or you emptied it already)

You can try this, IF shadow copy is enabled:
*What Unit 744 said*
Note on that: There's a 'mod' called 'savegame manager' which you might wish to start using in the future. it does automatic backups of the saves for you, and has the ability *somewhat* to repair broken saves i think.

Failing THAT, you could attempt various methods to recover it using data recovery software, such as 'getdataback' or 'recuva' or somesuch. (There's other, more complicated methods, but assuming you would be new to this stick to trying programs that more or less do it for you.)
Do NOT install it to the drive you are going to recover from, you may need to locate an ISO to boot from to try this, you should be able to google one up somewhere. (I just looked for "data recovery bootable ISO" and found a few, some are even free apparently). You will also need a seperate drive/device to recover the files to, as in recovery the drive you are recovering from is normally put into read only mode, so you will not be able to save to it.
It's time consuming to do, and there is no 100% guarantee that the files will be useable if/when recovered. But you could try that as well, because if shadow copy (vss) is not enabled, this would be your only last ditch hope.

[p0pt@rt]

if it's not in recycle bin, and you've got no other options.. you can try a "NTFS undelete" program which may (or may not) find the save file you wish to recover.. undelete doesn't always recover the items, especially in demo/trial mode..

[taibevazaha]

Originally posted by kremit_defrog:

if it's not in recycle bin, and you've got no other options.. you can try a "NTFS undelete" program which may (or may not) find the save file you wish to recover.. undelete doesn't always recover the items, especially in demo/trial mode..

This is what I was saying, yes.
Some allow you to 'scan' freely, but for recovery is usually a pay to unlock it thing.
(At least to degrees. some don't allow it at all, some limit the number or size of files you can recover for free)
There's a couple out there that are completely free, though I cannot vouch on effecacy of them.
I know that runtime's getdataback ones are pretty damn good, and they also have a bootable knoppix cd to run it from. It's also pretty inexpensive, compared to most if you need to buy it.
DIY data recovery is another good one, but i remember needing to buy it to actually recover files from a raid i was working on. (Was so worth it for the price, as was the runtime stuff.)
I know that recuva from priform is pretty good 'for free' but I know it does not dig as 'deep' as the others mentioned. Still a great one to try though.

[danjc84]

Originally posted by Cornell:

Hi all, I just deleted my game by mistake. I meant to delete a survival game but delted my normal game instead. I had worked on my normal game for several months and about 400 hours.
Is there anyway I can recover this? I have sent a message to support but was wondering if anyone know how to fix this. Sweating a bit here. :)

can you not recover from steam cloud?

[taibevazaha]

At this point sync has probably run, even if he had it set up...

[Zip Nolan]

Hi all, thanks for the good input. I havn't been successful so I have started from the beginning again. I was just about to enter the Hyades Galaxy where I planned to settle down. This time I think I will stick around the Euclid Galaxy and see if I can visit other player bases. I will be sure to back up my saved games from now on. :)