Absolutely livid, I've just lost a 120+ hour Witcher 3 save game. Now, I'll admit, it's completely due to my own incompetence, I knew for a fact Galaxy doesn't have cloud saves yet, but I went a head and formatted my Hard drives without backing up properly. I know you're probably laughing your tits off right now, but jesus christ, I had been trying to fix a few issues with windows and drivers for a good 6+ hours, and I just decided to nuke my drives because I knew that was sure to fix it and save me some frustration.

So my question is, is there anyway to get this save game back? I've tried Recuva, but I can't find the file, I don't think I'm looking in the right place but it might be gone for good. Please help me!

Thanks,
Nathan

*points and laughs*

no to be honest i think your save is dead and gone

you formatted your drive and installed windows over it if the file is stil there its either fragmented to hell or damaged
its possible to recover lost data via professional data rescue companies but this is disgustingly expensive and will take absolutely ages

is a save game worth $ 120 dollars per gigabyte ?

its best to just cut your losses
sigh and start over again

Good news: if you just did a simple format and re-installed Windows, you probably didn't overwrite the Witcher 3 save data.

Bad news: It's still going to be a monster to find.

The saves should by default have been in Documents/The Witcher 3/gamesaves so first, try to find a directory structure like that. If you can't, then probably you just eat the loss of time and start a new game.

If you did find such a directory structure, you still need to get the files. Grab anything that's .SAV and then sift through them; the save naming convention isn't a simple timestamp (looks like it *could* be a hexadecimal timestamp but I'm too lazy to investigate, sorry) so it might not be obvious which saves you need. Save file sizes vary wildly, from a few hundred k to several megs.

Even if you do get the saves, I don't know if just moving them to your new gamesave directory will fix it, but you could try and let us know XD

EDIT: if you didn't do a deep scan, make sure to try that as well. It will take a long time and produce a boatload of files, most likely. You probably don't need it, since you brought it up in the first place, but here'sa simple YouTube video tutorial about Recuva that, about five minutes in, shows a few options and how to select them. I skipped through the video, so apologies in advance if it's too simple or useless to you. But it does have a pretty tiger as background image on the guy's desktop, so there's that. >.>

I did not play a long time, but when i stared the Witcher 3 my saves was gone. The thing is i didn't reinstal OS or felete any files from place where should the saves be (my documents on OS drive).

So please help me if u can. I am mad bcs of it. I tried recovery programs but they finded nothing. No saves, its like they just disappeared dor no reason.

There are different places saves can be stored. My Documents, the hidden apps folder, in the same directory as the game or a subdirectory within the game, some even use the registry to save state.

Did you use the same profile? (assuming there's more than one)

Did you update the game? (Incompatible saves or different declared save folders may change from time to time between versions).

Does anyone else use the computer?

There's probably a dozen other questions to ask.

Something to note though, GoG does something quite fun. When they install the games there's going to be an installer ini file, which includes information like where your saves are stored. Following that you can try and find where your games were saved.

Sigh..
Backup your damn data, people! :\
Galaxy should really add those cloud saves, so Steam users won't screw up anymore.

(btw, I don't understand how normal users can now reinstall the OS, but can't still do backups..)

When all you have to do is either restore a recovery point, or put in a disc and let it auto-install, it is pretty easy. Backing up data is a little harder, since you need storage space, and you have to know what data you want to save, and you have to use a backup command of some type **gasp**.

I think this is more that the basics and fundamentals of computers aren't conveyed well or taught well. The average user everything they want to do has to be done through 99% with the mouse...

Then there's some that think that your icons and your monitor hold your data...

http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_backups.shtml

Ok, but at least in the past they were afraid to try that!
Nice link by the way XD

The original source link has a LOT more. They don't update too often though, although it's good to go back through it every year or two and just laugh your ass off :)

http://rinkworks.com/stupid And they should be. Wiping one's computer is a serious change and reset, nevermind lost data, lost programs and the like, but sometimes it's locked to a specific hardware configuration.

Although deleting all of one's files in their major OS still has happened.


When the 8-bit computers and 16bit computers were coming out, there were classes not only how to use the OS, but do basic programming too. But today it's very much everything is probably the Google Play store, or download from the internet and double-click for every problem and not learning how to script or how the systems actually work to solve it themselves. This is kinda a dumb and bad precedent to move towards in my opinion.

Sorry man, that sucks but I don't think you're getting it back. You can see if there's other software available to try and help.

Do you need that specific save or could you ask somebody else for a save file? (I don't have the game so I don't know how "custom" things can get.)

I have only one profile,

Well did update the game, but still never happend before,

I am only user of the computer,

I know exactly where my saves should be, but when i opened its not there, and i have to say Witcher is only game which lost saves, all other games still have their saves .. but still thanks for reacting :D and trying help

Use Restore Previous Versions for your save folder and see if anything comes up.