Loading Quicksave reverted to Months Ago!

[Voodoo8648]

While using TAC Life support I used mechjeb to auto warp to take off into the plane of target from Minmus and apparently ran out of power for no reason and the kerbal died from lack of O2.

So I reverted flight to launchpad no problem. But then I decided, maybe I can load my latest autosave, so I held F9... IT REVERTED ME BACK TO SOME SCENARIO MONTHS AGO!!!

I thought since I see the (auto saving) light up every so often during a mission, that means its saving my game. I've lost all my progress. I just want to go back to where I was. How can I get my progress back?

[Alshain]

Press Alt-F9. AutoSaving is not a function of the game, it is a function of the mod and the F9 key doesn't go look for those save files so you have to load them manually.

EDIT: Oops the AutoSaving message means it is saving the persistence file. That also occurs when you change scenes. But mods (I think Alarm Clock?) do an auto quicksave.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Alshain

[More Boosters]

Force-closing KSP before the quickloaded file takes over the persistence file might work.

[problemecium]

Yeah, sorry you had to learn it as late as you did, but the quicksave and the autosave are two different files. This is a good thing because then if you, say, make a quicksave before re-entry, it won't get overwritten by an autosave 30 seconds later when you're about to explode because you came in too steep.

Now that you have learned, this'll sound like useless advice, but it is good to have at least one or two extra backup saves in case something bugs out or you make a tragic mistake.

[Pecan]

For completeness:

persistent.sfs is the current game state. Autosaving updates the stored version of this. It is also replaced when you (quick)load a different state ...

quicksave.sfs is the game state most recently quicksaved with F5. This is what F9 will quickload.

*.sfs you can save any number of other, named, game states within a save by using alt-F5 (Windows, mod-F5 or whatever your control settings are). These are loaded with alt-F9 (although, since there's no difference in the file structure you can load quicksave.sfs or even persistent.sfs with alt-F9 as well, if you want to).

[bakanando]

Have you made any named saves? Loading one of those could save your game.

[cantab]

If KSP made an autosave after you quickloaded then it will have overwritten your previous autosave.

If you have a backup you can restore from that. Some mods including Kerbal Alarm Clock back up saves for you, or else check whatever system backups you take.

If you don't have a backup your remaining option is to attempt data recovery. I use PhotoRec. Download it and save it to an external drive, then run it and tell it to look for text files and save them to an external drive (not the drive in your computer or you risk overwriting the files you're trying to recover!).

Your ship designs are stored in separate files and they will not have been overwritten. If data recovery fails you might opt to cheat to catch up on the lost progress as best as you can remember it, either using the game's cheat options accessed by Alt+F12 or with the Hyperedit mod.