Can I restore game saves on my local Xbox One?

Louis Fox · May 27, 2023

Problem: Is there any way to restore local Xbox One hard drive contents? Contents which have NOT been synced to the cloud.

Background: About 6 months ago, I changed my internet provider. I didn't connect my Xbox One to the new network because I didn't notice it wasn't connected because I only ever play on my own. I've been playing Prey for about a month and have about 40 hours on there. For a particular mission it uses the actual time and I realsied the time was wrong. So I connected the Xbox to the internet and was prompted to do an update. So I did. The update failed mid way through and I had to reset the Xbox but I chose the option to keep games and game saves etc. This brought me to the Xbox One home screen. SO I then went to play Prey, but that had an updayte too, so I did that. Now when I open Prey, I can't see me game saves! I can't bear, at least for many months, to start again.

Any help would be very much appreciated. As a last resort, I'd probably try to access the hard drive and see if Windows can restore the contents but I don't want to do that.

:)

Belle B

Hi Louis

Sorry to hear about what happened, however, when you connected your console to the internet to sync your game save to the cloud it will usually ask you which you wanted to use if it's the cloud or local save.

Try to disconnect to the internet and see if it will show you your old save locally but if not, its possible that the old save that you made has been replaced with the new one already and if that's the case, I'm afraid its not reversible anymore.

Louis Fox

Hi Belle,

Thank you for such a quick response. I've tried that approach and also tried deleting the game install and installing the un-updated games from the disc but no avail. I am saddened by this. Maybe because the update errored out, and I had to do a reset it wiped certain data. I'm not sure.

I assume there isn't any MS recovery apps I could try?

Belle B

Thanks for getting back, Louis.

I understand how you feel about this and I would feel the same way if this happened to me. And to answer your question, sadly none. Moving forward, its best to let a download finish first or let the saving sync finish first before anything else to help prevent this from happening again. Also, try to connect your console to the internet as well from time to time to ensure that everything is up to date.

KpEcToBPsYcHo

Have a nice day. Progress in Forza Horizon 4 is lost when I logged in other my PC. But I choose "Local saves". Can I restore my progress?

Tezzerrific

well, the save is gone, picking the local will resync to the cloud and overwrite your original save, there is no restore function, there is nothing that can be done.

Can I restore game saves on my local Xbox One?