All my saves are gone!

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Here is the scenario :

I had a bug with the RetroArch launcher. The starting screen was stuck. So I just decide to reinstall RetroArch, I checked on the site, and there was the new 1.7.5 . Mine was 1.7.4. After the new install, the launcher problem was still there, so I decide to uninstall RetroArch.

And WHAT THE FUCK !!! the uninstall program uninstalled all the folders, the saves, the images, the bios, everything. I didn’t even had a warning message or something !!! Everything was deleted !!!

How is this even possible ! this represent hours and hours of play

Is there a solution ?

#2

Hey, I’m sorry to say that there’s no solution for this currently. When the uninstaller removes the RetroArch directory, it removes the subdirectories, as well, including the save/state directories.

We’ve had someone else report running into the same issue, so we will explore adding some sort of warning or something so this doesn’t catch people off-guard in the future.

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#3

that sounds bad. user-folders should be saved when uninstalling. does this mean if someone already download the very huge GB worth of thumbnails, this will be removed when uninstalling?

#4

If they’re in the RetroArch directory, yeah.

I know if you uninstall a game from Steam, it doesn’t touch any files/directories that you’ve added yourself (e.g., modded files), so maybe we can do something like that /shrug

#5

It’s a big big problem ! because you can have saves, RetroAchievment snapshots, bios and more… It’s the first time in my all life that I see a program who delete everything without warning.

In my case, I was able to find all my saves and other files, thanks to a recovery software (recuva).

But you must do something to prevent this from happening again. Thanks

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#6

I have an idea to recover your saves.

Download Recuva or Pandora Disk Drill

The saves are .srm file extension, states are .state1, 2, 3 extension.

Do a search for those extensions on your drive.

If it finds any files recover them to an external flash drive, not to C:\ drive or it could overwrite.

Once it’s all done, copy the recovered .srm files to your new RetroArch saves folder.

I hope it can recover the original file names, if not you’ll have to rename manually to match the rom file names.

#7

I know this topic was about 3 years ago, but I just ran into a HUGE issue.

I tried to run the RetroArch Uninstall program, as I didn’t exactly “need” it anymore. But when I did, every single one of my files and folders in my ‘Downloads’ folder somehow was wiped from my computer. When I tried to recover at least some of them, Windows was unable to find the main ‘Downloads’ folder, as it was removed from the disk.

I’m starting to panic as I had some important files/folders in there.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

#8

I would be interested in how to backup saves or memory cards as well. I’m new to retroarch and just started using it coming from individual emu apps. I usually backup memory card folders. Can I just copy the saves folders to another pc and it would have my latest memory cards per console?

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#9

That just happened to me. Right now I’m trying to run the Windows File Recovery to see if I can get some of the saves/states/firmware back. This is really awful.

Please at least add a warning to the uninstaller.

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#10

Never trust uninstallers. Always backup your files and often. I have 2 backups of the whole RA folder, including the cores, the cfgs, saves, everything. This has saved me many tmes. Even from a HDD failure.

I know i sound like captain hindsight here but if you really care about your files, you would have backups of them.

Also, Retroarch is portable, you can copy the files from a zip archive, it doesn’t need an installer ot uninstaller.

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