Automatic backups for your Rocksmith save files! (symlinks)

[dihy]

Hey folks, a lot of people have been talking about their Rocksmith saves disappearing and Steam cloud accidentally syncing corrupt copies.  Here's a quick and easy way to make sure you have backups (little bit of command prompt'ing required).  This uses symlinks which (in laymen's terms) means folder shortcuts that the application will view as actual folders.

 

• USERID is your unique Steam user ID number, for most people you should only see one user ID number in \Steam\userdata\
• Replace all examples of "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\" with whatever the install folder is for your Steam.  If you don't know what this is, you can go to steamrep.com, search your username.  Your userid will be at the line steam3ID.

 

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Step 1.  

Make sure Steam is not on.  Make a backup of your Rocksmith save, this is located in your "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Userdata\USERID\221680\" folder.  I suggest just copy pasting the entire 221680 folder to your desktop.

 

Step 2.  

Copy 221680 to your local Dropbox folder (or Google Drive, or whatever other cloud drive storage folder you use). Mine is E:\dropbox\, on my computer this would now look like E:\dropbox\221680\

 

Step 3.

*Delete* the 221680 folder from the Userdata folder.

 

Step 4.  

Open an elevated command prompt (right click cmd.exe click run as administrator).  and type:

    

mklink /j "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\\**USERID**\221680\" "E:\dropbox\221680\"

 

• If successful you should "Junction created...", and find a new shortcut folder in your userdata folder called "221680".  When you double click this shortcut, it should display the files located in Dropbox's 221680 folder.
  http://i.imgur.com/OVuzLbN.gif
   
• If unsuccessful, copy the entire 221680 folder back to \userdata\, Rocksmith will proceed like normal.  To remove the symlink, delete the 221680 shortcut in \userdata\ and replace it with the actual folder.
   
• If you try to open Rocksmith without the 221680 folder (or its shortcut), Rocksmith will attempt to redownload the last copy of Steam cloud sync'd saves.  If unsuccessful, a new profile will be created.  Good thing you have backups right?

 

How to recover backups when your stuff fails

 

Open Dropbox on the website, go to your 221680 folder, click the 3 dots on the right of the files you want to restore, click version history, click restore.  There are more files you will want to restore in the \remote\ folder as well. 

 

 

[cozy1]

Thanks for sharing.  Another way to prevent game save (user profile) losses is to use the CFSM game save feature before catastrophe strikes.  Have a look here: http://customsforge.com/index.php/topic/25016-restore-profile/?hl=backup&do=findComment&comment=191366