Well I installed Glary utilities and many (not all) of my saves actually were available for restore. The most recent was from several days ago, and that would have been an acceptable restore point. Unfortunately the save files seem to be corrupted, as they crash BGEE when I try to load the game. I guess I'm officially dead in the water. It was worth a shot just the same, and now I have a nifty little recovery app for future emergencies.
@marceror First lesson about file recovery: never do anything that will create or copy files on the disk holding data that you want to recover, the new files might be written where your precious data is. Installing a software on your main disk may create files using the space previously used by your save games in Documents directory (typically on the same partition). This may have happened already when the update downloaded the patch, so maybe it was already too late.
@marceror First lesson about file recovery: never do anything that will create or copy files on the disk holding data that you want to recover, the new files might be written where your precious data is. Installing a software on your main disk may create files using the space previously used by your save games in Documents directory (typically on the same partition). This may have happened already when the update downloaded the patch, so maybe it was already too late.
Makes sense. I actually installed Glary on my D drive, which is a separate hard disk that I use for storage and applications that don't need to be speedy, vs. installing on my C: drive which is a solid state drive (SSD), and where BGEE is installed. I did initially attempt to restore my save files to the C: drive however. Though they are quite small in size, I see how that wasn't the best way to go about it.
I suspect that the install of the patch itself, which was a good deal larger than the previous game version, is largely responsible for my save games not functioning after restore. One of the main game files is described as having "medium" quality while the other is "good" quality. Perhaps medium quality doesn't cut the mustard for a save game.
My main worry now is that I'm trying to install SCS. And one of the steps required is to make a hard link to the dialog.tlk file. But before I do this I want to make sure this isn't going to cause me any more problems in the future, such as deleting all my save games if BGEE gets patched again. Does anyone know if this will happen?
The patch would delete your dialog.tlk in that case, because when the installer finds a file X (dialog.tlk) in place it doesn't expect it to be and deletes it. This is what happened here too, people had placed (or hard linked) files in the game folder where they don't belong and the installer deleted them. Just be sure that whatever you put into your game folder is something you can afford to lose when you patch the game.
@marceror It's not that hard to create a new char, summon named NPC's, level up, jump ahead to the chapter you were and just give yourself the same XP you had before, as well as the items. Your journal will be pretty empty, but at least you can finish the game. EE:keeper helps when adding items.
I did just a couple of minor things to advance (added a small amount of XP and rushed through a few of the early areas). Yes, apparently because I'm a totally pathetic individual I did resolve to start over. :P
I wouldn't be comfortable doing much more than what I did. Advancing full chapters just doesn't work for how I like to roleplay my game. I like to see how many days have past since Gorion's death. I like to have my journal filled with quests and adventures that have brought me to the current day. Not having that would bother me too much, and ultimately lessen the experience for me -- and would probably cause me to eventually start over.
I will however be using my IT contacts and background to institute an automated nightly backup of my save games to 25 separate locations across the world. And shortly after that I should have a near realtime SRDF replication going to a couple of those locations. And if that doesn't satisfy me, I may implement the remainder of my playthrough using virtual machines, and VMware's "Fault Tolerance" solution which will essentially mean a second set of hardware will be mirroring each and every calculation that occurs on the primary, so in the event of a hard crash I can keep going with little to no perceivable interruption.
Is this overkill? Is it clear I never want to lose my save games again?
I managed to get caught up and surpass my previous progress, so it wasn't as bad as I thought. Fortunately I had a 3 day weekend last week, so that meant extra playtime. All's well that ends well, I suppose.
Comments
Installing a software on your main disk may create files using the space previously used by your save games in Documents directory (typically on the same partition). This may have happened already when the update downloaded the patch, so maybe it was already too late.
I suspect that the install of the patch itself, which was a good deal larger than the previous game version, is largely responsible for my save games not functioning after restore. One of the main game files is described as having "medium" quality while the other is "good" quality. Perhaps medium quality doesn't cut the mustard for a save game.
It's not that hard to create a new char, summon named NPC's, level up, jump ahead to the chapter you were and just give yourself the same XP you had before, as well as the items. Your journal will be pretty empty, but at least you can finish the game. EE:keeper helps when adding items.
I wouldn't be comfortable doing much more than what I did. Advancing full chapters just doesn't work for how I like to roleplay my game. I like to see how many days have past since Gorion's death. I like to have my journal filled with quests and adventures that have brought me to the current day. Not having that would bother me too much, and ultimately lessen the experience for me -- and would probably cause me to eventually start over.
I will however be using my IT contacts and background to institute an automated nightly backup of my save games to 25 separate locations across the world. And shortly after that I should have a near realtime SRDF replication going to a couple of those locations. And if that doesn't satisfy me, I may implement the remainder of my playthrough using virtual machines, and VMware's "Fault Tolerance" solution which will essentially mean a second set of hardware will be mirroring each and every calculation that occurs on the primary, so in the event of a hard crash I can keep going with little to no perceivable interruption.
Is this overkill? Is it clear I never want to lose my save games again?