Saving game... please don’t turn off your console.

[Rosebud]

No. But I always use 3-4 save slots to avoid losing everything in case it happens.

 

[Encephalon]

My foot tapped the power cord to my ps2 during a save while playing Disgaea on PS2. It was an old 1950s house so it came right out.

 

[Chettlar]

Well solid state or nand storage works differently compared to HDDs naturally. I mean power cutting off during a data transfer in a HDD usually can result in one or two things, because the actuator arm simply stops which causes a corrupted sector or the arm just drags across the entire platter causing irreparable damage resulting a full on crash, the former is recoverable by rewriting data over the corruption (be it formatting the drive for new data to be written), the latter the drive is more or less dead.

SSD's basically balance their writes by dividing data entirely on their storage cells. So if a bad chunk of data comes along or transfer gets cut off due do a power loss it's not nearly as catastrophic, at worse you'll lose the most recent save and some sort of error correction / data recovery process would occur.

I don't know if the 360 had some sort of system recovery process due to a power loss which impacted the 4GB units. There is a code you can enter to restore system software in event of failed update though, so perhaps similar process would be required if data was damaged due to the power cutting out during a save.

Click to shrink...

Oh I had no idea about the restore thing. That's cool.

 

[Chettlar]

Sounds about right. I had the same thing happen to me. Except well instead of my system being turned off from the plug. I had full on power outage which when I was transfering stuff from external to internal the power cut out entirely and contents of both drives both internal and external were completely wiped due to bad sectors / corruption.

I had to download the full 1GB system software to a flash drive and reinstall the PS4 firmware / OS because everything on the internal drive was gone.

It's bad enough at the time I didn't consider backing up my saves to a flash drive (Not that I could do so from the Cloud because I didn't have PS+ at the time) so I had basically nothing from recovery, losing basically a multiple hundred hour plus saves from Disgaea 5, FF7R, and DQXI, Yakuza 0 through Kiwami 2, Persona 5 Royal, Trails of Cold Steel 1, 2, and 3, and Ghost of Tsushima.

Click to shrink...

OOOOF

 

[saturnineCarrier]

this thread reminded me of that time my laptop ssd partition started getting corrupted while I was working. it was a slow process of files disappearing. looked at my app folder empty itself in real time. some real ass 90s "we hacked the firewall" shit lmao

never lost a save to a hasty shut off. plenty of corrupted memory cards though. last one was when I dug out my vita to play some PS Classic. that 64Go memory card wasn't the best investment, it turns out.

 

[TheMadTitan]

I don't think I've done this, but given how many times I've lost Persona 4 saves -- my time with Persona 4 is cursed, long story -- I'm sure it's had to have happened at some point.

Sometimes, you move faster than you think.

 

[Shamanoski]

Never happened to me before. But now that I mentioned it, I'm expecting it to happen any day now.

 

[03sho]

FF7R has some kind of glitch that causes it to freeze when saving on PS5. Our PS5 froze and we had to cut the power. Save was fine, thankfully.

Click to shrink...

Ah i'm about to start it on PS5.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

I lost my original Pokemon Blue save and all of my items in Phantasy Star Online by having this happen. Needless to say I have since given it a few seconds before quitting the game or turning the system off.

 

[Jimnymebob]

BioShock locked up on PS3 during that, so I had to switch the console off, and yep, it corrupted the save.
It annoyed me as well because I was juuuust about to head over to the Sander Cohen level, but because of that i had to replay the opening which just isn't fun gameplay wise once you've seen it once.

 

[PotionBleue]

What kind of heathen runs their console without a UPS? Ok, maybe most of us but I had a spare outlet on my PC one so I should never see this horror.

Click to shrink...

Interestingly, in case of power cut, a docked Nintendo Switch automatically goes into handheld mode as it thinks it was removed from the dock.

It's obvious but when it happens you're like "oh, yeah, that's cool!".

 

[wild_one]

Reading these posts make me fearful for that ever happening. Luckily once I started consolidating everything behind a UPS that wasn't a big issue, I just can't control system crashes for which I've been fortunate not to have happen so far. Outside the time the PS5 crashed and corrupted the external SSD with all the PS4 games on it...

 

[Nilou]

Omfg this just gave me PTSD. I lost 50 hours of FF13 progress because of a lightning storm.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

I'm sorry both for posting the gif as it just felt too related not to share and for this having happened to you :(

 

[L4DANathan]

I remember when I used to intentionally do that to clone Pokémon in Pokémon Crystal.

Click to shrink...

Wow, you just clubbed me over the head with nostalgia.

 

[Hoa]

Happened to me when I was doing post game shit in Megaman Battle Network 3. Had to start the game alllllllllll over.

Luckily it was still fresh in my mind so it didn't take as long to get back to that point, but man did the gba battery body me.

 

[JustinH]

whoa. I've never heard of an entire drive corrupting. I wonder what would happen if it was the memory unit (like in the 4GB model).

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that'd be interesting to see what would happen to a memory unit.

It's been like... geez, 8 years, but what I remember is that the console made me format the hard drive for it to be "usable" again. I can't remember exactly what the message was, though.

 

[HououinKyouma]

Spoiler

I'm sorry both for posting the gif as it just felt too related not to share and for this having happened to you :(

Click to shrink...

Haha perfectly (and sadly) accurate.

 

[MrBanballow]

While I don't recall it ever happening to me, it's something I would worry about. One of the things I like about my Switch. Power goes out while I'm docked, it just swaps to handheld and wraps up.

 

[julian]

Console? No. Mac? Yes. Twice and both times were with Sim/Yoot Tower. Once lightning struck and the whole house lost power. Another time, my asshole uncle flipped the light switch that clearly had a label on it that said "don't touch this!" while saying "what's this do?"

 

[Niosai]

Ah i'm about to start it on PS5.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, just have 2 save files to be safe. Hell, even having the automated ought to be enough. It happened to me a couple of times but it's been fine.

 

[Mupod]

The one time that comes to mind was Golden Sun: The Lost Age. For some background, you're allowed to import save data into the game from the first title - however, I had sold my cart to my cousin after I imported my data. I had done an absurd amount of grinding in the first game just as something to do on the bus so I was really looking forward to getting back my old party. I didn't notice my battery was low until it was too late, so I tried to save my game and shut down but the battery cut-out mid way. I was freaking the fuck out for a minute until I realized the game creates auto-backups and it just reloaded that.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

Fallout 3 once crashed the fuck out of my PS3 while autosaving I think? ...and caused the whole internal hard drive to fail. I didn't just lose my Fallout 3 saves, I lost every save on the console.

I frequently back up saves now, and rotate through save slots in case of the worst.

 

[Black_Stride]

Pressing the powerbutton on a dreamcast while it says that will wipe that save.

My Phantasy Star Online character can attest to that.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Raidou Kuzunoha 2 (PS2 game I got off PSN for PS3). Power cut, PS3 died. Was around 60-70% of the way through the game. Never went back. Shame since I love Atlus RPGs. Maybe one day. (I also lost my Persona 4 Arena save file as well in the process, which I was near the end of also...ugh)