Recovering a farm backup

Sometimes, Steam Cloud will mess up the save data and cause farms to disappear. This guide will help you in recovering files from the backup folder.

Introduction

Farm Together saves farm data only to your account, so in case of data loss (usually due to Steam Cloud synchronization issues), you may need to recover from the backup files.

Farm Together saves data every 5 minutes of playtime (or when you quit the game), and creates a save backup approximately every 15 minutes of continuous playtime (it doesn't save a backup when you quit the game).

If you start the game and find out your farms are gone, you should be able to recover it by following these steps, as long as you haven't played a 15 minutes or longer session after the loss.

Backup file location

The game saves some files outside of Steam Cloud as backup, in the following path:

• Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Milkstone Studios\FarmTogether\
  
  <username> is your windows username.
  AppData is a hidden folder, so if you haven't enabled the "Show Hidden files" checkbox, you won't see it by default.
  
  The easiest way to access this folder is to open an explorer window and paste the address in the address bar:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Milkstone Studios/FarmTogether/
  
  Library is a hidden folder, you can see it by going to your home folder and pressing Option+Shift+. (the dot key)
  
  
• Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Milkstone Studios/FarmTogether

Check for the .bak files there. If you have the "Hide file extensions" setting checked (enabled by default), you won't see the .bak part. The files we're looking for have the following naming scheme:

<SteamId>_farm_<farmnumber>.bak
<SteamId>_farms.bak

Where SteamId is your user's unique SteamId, and <farmnumber> is a farm index (usually 0).


Once we have located the files, we can now try placing them in the Steam Cloud folder.

Save file location

Save files are stored on the Steam Cloud folder, located in:

• Windows: <steam folder>/userdata/<your_user_id>/673950/remote
  
  Steam Folder is usually c:\program files(x86)\Steam
  
  
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/<your_user_id>/673950/remote
  
  
• Linux: ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<your_user_id>/673950/remote

Your user id is an unique number, different from the previous SteamId. If you don't know which one it is, check all folders there (usually there shouldn't be more than a couple, unless you're on a shared computer).

Once we're in the "remote" folder, we should see something very similar to this:


The "farms.data" is the file that has the list of farms, and player customization information.
The "farms.bak" is another backup file, but that one will be invalid too if you had a Steam Cloud synchronization problem.

Inside the "farms" folder, we will have something similar to this:


Every .data file is a separate farm, and there may be .bak files there as well.

Restoring the farms

So, now that we have all files located, what we need to do is copy and rename the backup files in the proper place:

• Rename <SteamId>_farms.bak to farms.data in the backup folder and overwrite the one in the Steam Cloud folder
  
• Rename all <SteamId>_farm_<farmnumber>.bak files to farm_<farmnumber>.data and overwrite the ones in the Steam Cloud "farms" folder.

You may want to make a copy of the files before overwriting them, just in case.

With this done, start the game and check if the farms are properly restored (they should!). Some progress may be lost (because of the 15 minutes backup interval), but most of the farm contents should be there.

[Darkness Vortex]

The problem isn't with the game but with Steam's Cloud storage synchronizing improperly. The game is correctly functional if you turn off the Cloud syncing system, but then you don't have access to your same saves across different computers/devices or in the case of a device save loss. It mostly just depends on what is important to each player whether they use the Cloud sync or not. The devs are just extra helpful by helping players to recover lost saves if a desync does happen.

[ereg]

erm, the tutorial is great, but isn't it the developer's job to make the game work and we didn't have to save our progress?

[Darkness Vortex]

To change the BAK to a DATA file, make sure your file browser is set to show file extensions. Then, just rename the .bak file to a .data file by overwriting the .bak part of the filename with .data. I believe you can rename a filename by either clicking twice (not doubleclicking) on the filename or right clicking the file and selecting rename.

Example:
filename.bak

would be changed to:
filename.data

[IceNest]

I dont understand how u can make the BAK file to a Data file? Dont it need to be converted?

[IceNest]

My GF and i was able to accidently recover from local on diffrent PC. I have gone in the Locallow and found the Bak file. But i cant get the rest to work. I have added u on steam so if u have time to help i would be very happy since we lost alot of progress...

[-=Tiger=-]

.

[Darkness Vortex]

Is it possible that things are happening in the background, such as Farmhands? :o

[daryl.valliquette]

why is my money flashing and changing my amount

[Darkness Vortex]

Is it possible to switch away from Cloud saves without losing saves?

[Piper]

Thank you for your help...I truly appreciate this