Do you keep autosaves on or not?

[aro230]

I have been playing the game since the launch day and I always kept it on. But I just now realized how detrimental it possibly was to the number of saves I have. Do you keep yours completely off or leave some individual ones enabled, like after travelling or sleeping?

[The Inept European]

You should scrub your autosaves periodically or they will lead to a corrupted save game. Same with quicksaves and exitsaves.

[Jork]

I leave autosave on.

Every time I want to make a save, I always do a new save. The only time I ever load an autosave is if my game crashed or something and it's the most recent save as I don't want to repeat an entire hour of gameplay if I lost that.

I've done it this way for every bethesda game and I've yet to have a single save corrupt on me, even when using 150+ mods. I'm assuming that's the issue you're talking about regarding "detrimental to the number of saves I have."

It's a bit annoying having to manually go in my games folder to delete saves every once in a while but it's not a big deal. Takes way too long deleting saves directly ingame.

Pretty sure save corruption is only a big risk if you keep loading autosaves all the time, or if you're constantly overwrite saves and relying on them.

I've never had a corrupt save in any bethesda game with the above method. I'm sure there's still a tiny risk but in skyrim/fo4, but it's been smooth sailing for me for the past 9 years.

[The Inept European]

If you never purge your autosaves it's literally the same three files on disk that have been written to X thousand times each. So yes when you come to load them the odds of them corrupting increases with every rewrite. And the only point of having an autosave at all is the possibility that you might need to load from it.

This is an extremely well documented and real issue. If some people have never experienced it, great. Many people have had characters ruined by it.

[Jork]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

If you never purge your autosaves it's literally the same three files on disk that have been written too X thousand times each. So yes when you come to load them the odds of them corrupting increases with every rewrite. And the only point of having an autosave at all is the possibility that you might need to load from it.

This is an extremely well documented and real issue. If some people have never experienced it, great. Many people have had characters ruined by it.

I'm aware. I acknowledged that in my above post that I'm sure it can still happen and constant overwrites are the culprit, but for the past 9 years I've never had a problem even with massive mods going on, but like I said, I do purge my save folder manually as doing it ingame one by one takes forever.

It's definitely best to constantly create new saves and keep cleaning your save folder.

I just leave autosave on as a failsafe incase my game crashes and I lost an hour of progress without said autosave to act as a crutch.

If people are extremely paranoid, definitely turn autosaving off. Just chipping in my experience.

[The Inept European]

I agree with your method - regular hard saves and autosaves only as a safety net.

But the safety net is significantly improved by regularly deleting autosaves (etc). Eg every time you prune your hard saves.

[Jork]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

I agree with your method - regular hard saves and autosaves only as a safety net.

But the safety net is significantly improved by regularly deleting autosaves (etc). Eg every time you prune your hard saves.

Definitely. When I play a lot, I purge my save folder (except for the 5 most recent hard-saves) every couple of days.

If anyone reading doesn't know, you can find them in my games > fallout 4 > saves. Manually deleting in waves saves you a lot of time.

[aro230]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

You should scrub your autosaves periodically or they will lead to a corrupted save game. Same with quicksaves and exitsaves.

Originally posted by The Inept European:

If you never purge your autosaves it's literally the same three files on disk that have been written to X thousand times each. So yes when you come to load them the odds of them corrupting increases with every rewrite. And the only point of having an autosave at all is the possibility that you might need to load from it.

This is an extremely well documented and real issue. If some people have never experienced it, great. Many people have had characters ruined by it.

Originally posted by Coronacop:

I leave autosave on.

Every time I want to make a save, I always do a new save. The only time I ever load an autosave is if my game crashed or something and it's the most recent save as I don't want to repeat an entire hour of gameplay if I lost that.

I've done it this way for every bethesda game and I've yet to have a single save corrupt on me, even when using 150+ mods. I'm assuming that's the issue you're talking about regarding "detrimental to the number of saves I have."

It's a bit annoying having to manually go in my games folder to delete saves every once in a while but it's not a big deal. Takes way too long deleting saves directly ingame.

Pretty sure save corruption is only a big risk if you keep loading autosaves all the time, or if you're constantly overwrite saves and relying on them.

I've never had a corrupt save in any bethesda game with the above method. I'm sure there's still a tiny risk but in skyrim/fo4, but it's been smooth sailing for me for the past 9 years.

I actually always make a new save and never overwrite them, including autosaves. Does this make my save safe? If not, would turning them off reduce/negate the risk of corruption?

[Jork]

Originally posted by aro230:

I actually always make a new save and never overwrite them, including autosaves. Does this make my save safe? If not, would turning them off reduce/negate the risk of corruption?

If you're purging those autosaves on a regular basis, you should be fine, as I've done it this way for years and never had a save corrupt.

Keep in mind though that like I said, I only ever resort to loading an autosave if I just lost a huge amount of progress due to a game crash/power outage/whatever and don't want to re-trace my steps.

If you're super paranoid though, yeah, disable autosaves altogether and only ever make brand new hard saves. That's the most ironclad method if you absolutely don't want to leave anything to chance.

[The Inept European]

The autosaves automatically overwrite unless you periodically delete them. Deleting them is the only way to prevent the same autosaves being overwritten multiple times. Each autosave slot is one specific file.

[aro230]

Originally posted by Coronacop:

Originally posted by aro230:

I actually always make a new save and never overwrite them, including autosaves. Does this make my save safe? If not, would turning them off reduce/negate the risk of corruption?

If you're purging those autosaves on a regular basis, you should be fine, as I've done it this way for years and never had a save corrupt.

Keep in mind though that like I said, I only ever resort to loading an autosave if I just lost a huge amount of progress due to a game crash/power outage/whatever and don't want to re-trace my steps.

If you're super paranoid though, yeah, disable autosaves altogether and only ever make brand new hard saves. That's the most ironclad method if you absolutely don't want to leave anything to chance.

Originally posted by The Inept European:

The autosaves automatically overwrite unless you periodically delete them. Deleting them is the only way to prevent the same autosaves being overwritten multiple times. Each autosave slot is one specific file.

All I have been doing over the years was making a new one every time I wanted to save. Now I can see multiple of those files in the saves folder, namely five autosaves with "1" in the name, four with "2" and three with "3" (along with a few exit and quick saves and of course a lot of the regular ones). Should I do anything to them or leave them be? I might actually disable autosaving altogether, just in case. Sorry for the ignorance, I had no idea how autosaving exactly works, always thought there is just one file. Some more advice would be very appreciated :)

[Foti1805]

im keeping auto saves

[The Inept European]

There's one set of autosaves (, quicksaves, exitsaves) per character.

[Jork]

I'll try to be more clear.

If you never purge autosaves, they keep overwriting themselves over and over and over.

In this case for Fallout 4, the more a save is being overwritten on the same slot (autosave, or manual) there's an ever increasing chance for something to screw up during the overwriting process.

However, if you're constantly making new saves, since it's creating a brand new save file by snapshotting your current data for the first time rather than overwriting an existing file, the risk of something going wrong is as unlikely as you'll possibly get.

Make a habit of deleting your autosaves on a regular basis as this will make new ones rather than overwriting the same slots constantly, or turn them off completely. I only ever have an autosave created before I fast travel, or before I sleep. I manually purge all of my saves EXCEPT for my five most recent hard manual saves, every couple days through the my games/fallout 4/saves folder.

If you're still confused or concerned, I would just turn autosaves off completely and make a habit of remembering to create new manual saves every 15 mins or so. Easier said than done though with trying to remember something so simple, believe me. That's why I leave my autosave on.

[aro230]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

There's one set of autosaves (, quicksaves, exitsaves) per character.

That makes sense, given I have three character slots. Thanks!

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by Coronacop:

I'll try to be more clear.

^^^ this is totally correct and accurate