Skyrim Saved game files

I see. Is Skyrim the only game that does this? In that case what I'll advise is that you connect your console to the internet periodically as you play to sync the saves to the cloud. You don't need much internet, as you can accomplish that using your phone's hotspot.

Only had the Series X about 2 months, the only games that I have installed on it so far are FO 76, Skyrim & just started ESO, so yes it the only game that does this, but it also the only game that's not an on-line game. The internet is always running & the console is always connected. So, apparently then when the console synced after our internet was restored last week, those game saves from during the outage were synced "away"? And where did the months' worth of my gaming go to, they had not been affected by the internet problems.

Well, that procedure isn't something that I've seen being done beforehand, given that save files cannot be copied to an external device, only from the console to the cloud and vice-versa. What your friend most likely does is that he/she copies the entire game to the external hard drive, tried to play it on a different console with their account, but when they start the game, the save file is downloaded from the cloud. Sadly, there's no alternative way to recover the save, sadly.

You're welcome, Mark!

Based on what you've reported, you bought the external hard drive with the intention of saving game saves there, which unfortunately isn't possible. But you can use that drive to install games on, which can be handy in most cases. Regarding the game saves, if you are using the same account on both the Series S and the Series X, you will be sharing the saves across both consoles, meaning that this could create some sort of conflict between both, and cause issues with game progressing. It is recommended that you only keep your account on your main console, avoiding any sort of syncing issue.

I would like to be sure that we have the same understanding of the terminology. I have a friend who says she does what I wish to do, on her X series. I don't want to "save" to the external drive. I want to "copy" the saved game files to the external drive, like you would copy a file(s) from your computer's hard drive to an external one. So that I can replace any saved game files on my X series that are lost or damaged. Using the external drive as 2nd "backup device" per say, along with the Xbox cloud, but independent of it.

Hello ! I'm Claus, an Independent Microsoft Community Consultant for Xbox! Glad to be able to help you!

When you are playing games, and they aren't syncing to the Xbox Live servers, what usually happens is that when the console can connected to the servers again, it will detect that the local save (save in your console) is newer than the cloud save, and will ask what save you want to use and will automatically overwrite the other save, keeping both synced (local and cloud).

Good morning, Claus

My S series did that. My New X hasn't yet & didn't with my Skyrim saves, they just disappeared. Is there a way to keep this from happening again? I just bought the "Seagate - 2TB Game Drive for Xbox External USB 3.2 Gen 1 Portable Hard Drive Xbox Certified with Green LED Bar". If I back up my saves to this device are they "protected" from cloud syncs?

Thank you for your time.

Hello MarkLockwood2! I'm Claus, an Independent Microsoft Community Consultant for Xbox! Glad to be able to help you!

When you are playing games, and they aren't syncing to the Xbox Live servers, what usually happens is that when the console can connected to the servers again, it will detect that the local save (save in your console) is newer than the cloud save, and will ask what save you want to use and will automatically overwrite the other save, keeping both synced (local and cloud).