Has a power outage ever erased a save file?

[Eddie the head]

It corrupts the save file it's still there it's just junk. But yeah it happens to me all the time I live off the grid so sometimes a generator runs out of gas or someone changes it without telling you. As a consequence I got into the habit of saving every 5 feet under different files though.

 

[Torrasque]

Does "my batteries died while playing Pokemon, and I lost a few hours of data" count?
I can't remember the last time I had a power outage killing my game. I've had my xbox freeze while playing games, but that doesn't really count.

 

[evilneko]

No, I have my computers on UPS units.

 

[Jamash]

Why they say don't turn the system off while saving. In my long gaming career (20+ years) it has only happened to me one time during a thunderstorm.

The warning about not turning off the console while saving is to prevent a manual power cut by the user. No warning can ever prevent a random power cut due to something like a thunderstorm.

It's only happened to you once in 20+ years because you've only had one random power cut in 20+ years, but if you manually cut the power to the console when it was saving, then you would experience corrupted saves almost every time you did this.

 

[Dr Bodom]

My brother once pulled the plug to the N64 as I was saving Mario 64. Lost 117 stars. which to my 9 year old self was a colossal achievement. He apologized by saying that he was supposed to disconnect the TV instead, "as a joke".

 

[Ando85]

Why they say don't turn the system off while saving. In my long gaming career (20+ years) it has only happened to me one time during a thunderstorm.

The warning about not turning off the console while saving is to prevent a manual power cut by the user. No warning can ever prevent a random power cut due to something like a thunderstorm.

It's only happened to you once in 20+ years because you've only had one random power cut in 20+ years, but if you manually cut the power to the console when it was saving, then you would experience corrupted saves almost every time you did this.

Oh yes I see what you mean. I might of worded it better. I know the warning is to not turn off the power, but essentially the same effect happens be it on purpose or a random outage.

 

[The Night Angel]

I had it happen to me on the ps3, I lost all my save files for Oblivion, as well as many other games. I had spent hundreds of hours on Oblivion when it happened, so I was quite annoyed. I have never purposefully cut the power to the console, so that's the only time.

 

[somonels]

Technically no, power outages don't erase anything. The overwrite process must have been in progress and the file became corrupted, which the game automatically erased on the next load or did not recognize and defaulted it as 'gone'.

 

[Esotera]

Even if it's just one player in every million that this will happen to, if your game has a million players, then this will happen quite frequently, and your players will not be happy. It's very unlikely that a save file will be corrupted if you turn the game off during, but it's best to tell the player not to switch off just to be certain.

actually if it happens to just one in every million players and your game has a million players it won't happen quite frequently.. it would only happen once... just saying

I meant if it's a one in a million bug, so it happens to one player in every million each time they try to save. They'd probably be playing it more than once & saving it more than that, which would make it happen more than once. Sorry as it was a bit unclear in the first post.

 

[Reaper195]

Final Fantasy 7 when I was (ironically) seven. Power cu Good bye, last twelve hours.