save files vanishing

[stormpiilots]

i currently (or rather, up until an hour or so ago) only had two saves in the sims 4 because i had to redownload the game the other day and like an idiot i forgot to back my saves up (this is not the first time i've done that, that one's on me). i keep everything to do with the game on a hard drive, for two reasons; i switch between playing on my laptop and pc depending on what room i'm in or whether my boyfriend wants to play something on the pc, and because my laptop simply can't handle the game + all the packs i have (it can just about fit them all on it, but if i run the game for more than 30 minutes it starts to feel like it's going to burst into flames any second, with the hard drive the fan still works overtime but at least it's not so hot it gives me erythema ab igne).

up until now, moving the hard drive between the two had never caused an issue like this, but this afternoon after i finished work i went to switch from my laptop which i had been playing on all day to the pc, and when i opened the game the save i'd been playing all day was just gone. i made the save yesterday and it was actually a remake of one i'd lost due to my idiocy when redownloading the game (so is the surviving file, but that's neither here nor there because it's still there) because i was luckily not so far into playing it when i lost it that i couldn't catch back up to a similar enough point relatively quickly, so i was very annoyed to see that it was just gone. i switched the hard drive back to the laptop to see if that brought it back, but no, it's not there anymore either. does anyone have any idea what the hell happened? i'm so baffled about this 

[puzzlezaddict]

@stormpiilots  Are the old save files still on the hard drive?  As in, if you open File Explorer and look at the contents of the hard drive directly, are the files there?  You can tell the difference between old and new ones by comparing their modified dates.

The reason I ask is that there are two very different possibilities here: that the files have been deleted or corrupted, which would suggest an issue with the hard drive; or that Sims 4 isn't reading the files that are in fact still present, which could be an issue with the game but also might be due to a system setting.  For example, if you've plugged in your devices in a different order, then the hard drive would have a different letter assigned to it.  Sims 4 might be looking for saves on drive D while the hard drive is now drive E.

Let me know either way, and please also run a dxdiag and attach it to a post for good measure.  Keep the hard drive plugged in and mounted (recognized by the system) while you run the dxdiag.

https://help.ea.com/en/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

[stormpiilots]

@puzzlezaddict  they do appear to be there, there are a few with various times from the afternoon (when i'm playing on my laptop i save quite frequently just in case the game crashes). the hard drive is still e: on the pc and it's still d: on the laptop, i don't think that's ever been an issue before but could that be linked to it? it never seems to have been a problem before, but i'm certainly no expert.

i've run the dxdiag and attached it here. it was run on the pc, should i do one on the laptop too?

[puzzlezaddict]

@stormpiilots  Just to clarify, does Sims 4 recognize the new saves you've made, or none at all?  And do the older saves appear on the hard drive too?  I know you see the newer ones, but I'm specifically curious whether there are any saves you can see on the hard drive that the game doesn't load.

[stormpiilots]

the game recognised the two saves id made since i accidentally lost all the previous ones (which was my mistake and i understand how that happened). after the one save vanished, it still recognised the other one. since i forgot to back the old files up and deleted them when i had to redownload the game the hard drive doesnt recognise them anymore, they’re gone entirely. there’s two saves on that hard drive (3 now, since i made a new one today), and one of those is loaded by the game, one isn’t. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@stormpiilots  Please post a screenshot of the folder that contains the saves, as in, I'd like to see the save files themselves.