Any · Gaming

Save your games the right way

The #1 cause of 'I lost 200 hours of progress' is not a disk failure — it's saves living somewhere you didn't think to back up.

  • Difficulty Easy
  • Estimated time 5 min
  • Platform Any
  • Last updated
Save your games the right way — schematic diagram

Before you start

Low risk. This change is reversible — you can return to the previous state without professional help or data loss.

Steps

  1. Find where each game saves: most Steam games in %userprofile%\AppData\Local\ or Documents
  2. Copy your whole Documents\My Games (or the game's actual save folder) monthly to an external drive
  3. For Steam: enable Cloud Sync for games that support it — extra copy = extra safety

How to verify the fix

A copy of your save folder exists on an external drive (or Steam Cloud shows synced) from within the last month.

If this didn't fix it

You can't find where a game stores saves, or cloud sync never appears — that game needs manual backup each session.

Next stop: the related fixes below, or start a guided diagnosis.

Related fixes

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