Restoring from cloud backups

General chit chat regarding the GameSave Manager project, announcements and general feedback.
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Willium_Bob_Cole
Posts: 1
Joined: 30 Jun 2019, 03:31

Restoring from cloud backups

Post by Willium_Bob_Cole »

It wasn't long before my PC died that I actually made my backups, so that was a bit of luck! I have downloaded my google drive archives, but I am unsure how to get GSM to recognise them, and where necessary, restore them. It was my motherboard that broke, but since (after 7 months without a computer) I have gotten a new Ryzen CPU, my windows 7 installation was no longer usable, so I was forced to do a clean install of windows 10 on a new drive (I was planning to upgrade to 10, before all this). I have manually recovered what I can from my windows 7 drive, but just in case, I want to restore my google drive backups. The files are structured: \Google Drive\GameSave Manager\Backups\[Game Name]\[Game Name].gsba

Since I am also using my existing Steam drive, GSM is quite happy to scan my steam folders, however, some games for sure don't store their saves directly there, so it would be nice if I could first scan my backups, and then compare what it finds and only update as necessary; a full scan seems excessive, and not only that, I can't figure out how to easily restore my backups in the first place... Since each save backup is in it's own sub folder, do I seriously need to go into each folder one by one and restore from backup that way? That can't be the best way of doing things, I have already told GSM to use my google drive folder, I feel like it should just recognise that there are saves here already, instead of trying to scan my entire steam drive and, presumably, overwriting all the backups that I already have. Am I overlooking something, or is this use case not properly supported? And if not, can it be, please?? Also I dont know what happens in the event that it tries to save a backup when a different one already exists, I should hope it asks what to do in that instance (overwrite, ignore, restore from the backup, and preferably with some kind of info to help inform that choice such as file size, and if possible, any information about the actual progress it has, though that might be asking a bit much). I only say this because I played a round of Plague Inc. and whilst it remembered my general progress, there were a lot of things reset such as tutorial message progress, so now there will be a newer version of that progress file somewhere, which also presumably has an older but more appropriate file already stored in my backup archives...

Thanks! :)

edit: I let it do a full system scan anyway, so it populated the list with what was on my system. According to GSM, there are 302 items detected. Looking at my google drive backups folder, there are 384 items. SURELY there is a better way to restore the missing 82 saves (that apparently weren't stored directly in my documents folder, which I copied over from my Windows 7 drive), than to manually compare the GSM list with the Google Drive folder, to see what is missing, and then restore the backup, one... by... one... it just needs to scan what is in the cloud folder which it is already set up to be linked with, and be all like "oh, there are saves in the cloud that are not ON this system, would you like to restore them all?" and show me a list of which saves are missing(or different to the local version), so I can quickly pick all or specify just certain ones... The interface seems basically so ready for this, I just can't understand why this functionality is missing (or hard to find)
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InsaneMatt
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Posts: 464
Joined: 22 Jan 2018, 00:33

Re: Restoring from cloud backups

Post by InsaneMatt »

Apologies for the late response.
Willium_Bob_Cole wrote: 30 Jun 2019, 03:51 It wasn't long before my PC died that I actually made my backups, so that was a bit of luck! I have downloaded my google drive archives, but I am unsure how to get GSM to recognise them, and where necessary, restore them.
Your backups are stored as .gsba (GameSave Backup Archive) files. You can open them within GameSave Manager to restore them.
Generally speaking, GameSave Manager will automatically detect the path to restore on your system automatically (i.e dynamically detected).
Willium_Bob_Cole wrote: 30 Jun 2019, 03:51 Since I am also using my existing Steam drive, GSM is quite happy to scan my steam folders, however, some games for sure don't store their saves directly there, so it would be nice if I could first scan my backups, and then compare what it finds and only update as necessary; a full scan seems excessive, and not only that, I can't figure out how to easily restore my backups in the first place... Since each save backup is in it's own sub folder, do I seriously need to go into each folder one by one and restore from backup that way?
You can open multiple archive files at a time by using Ctrl + A or holding Ctrl while clicking a file within the 'Open Archive' dialog.
The catch for this is they must all be in the same directory; copying / moving the files manually will solve this.
Willium_Bob_Cole wrote: 30 Jun 2019, 03:51 Also I dont know what happens in the event that it tries to save a backup when a different one already exists, I should hope it asks what to do in that instance (overwrite, ignore, restore from the backup, and preferably with some kind of info to help inform that choice such as file size, and if possible, any information about the actual progress it has, though that might be asking a bit much). I only say this because I played a round of Plague Inc. and whilst it remembered my general progress, there were a lot of things reset such as tutorial message progress, so now there will be a newer version of that progress file somewhere, which also presumably has an older but more appropriate file already stored in my backup archives...
Behaviour for backups are set via Program Settings.
You can configure GameSave Manager to create new archives each time it performs a backup, create new archives on file change detection and 'consolidate' the archive count (i.e "have no more than 5 .gsba files for each game").
Willium_Bob_Cole wrote: 30 Jun 2019, 03:51 edit: I let it do a full system scan anyway, so it populated the list with what was on my system. According to GSM, there are 302 items detected. Looking at my google drive backups folder, there are 384 items. SURELY there is a better way to restore the missing 82 saves (that apparently weren't stored directly in my documents folder, which I copied over from my Windows 7 drive), than to manually compare the GSM list with the Google Drive folder, to see what is missing, and then restore the backup, one... by... one... it just needs to scan what is in the cloud folder which it is already set up to be linked with, and be all like "oh, there are saves in the cloud that are not ON this system, would you like to restore them all?" and show me a list of which saves are missing(or different to the local version), so I can quickly pick all or specify just certain ones... The interface seems basically so ready for this, I just can't understand why this functionality is missing (or hard to find)
This would be tricky to implement, but sounds useful.
Perhaps a 4.x feature? Hmmm
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