Backing up SD card data caused my town to delete!

[Jinglefruit]

So I've heard before of people backing up their save data for digital downloads on their PC's in case anything happens to their towns or whatever. And because of the discovery that using the home menu to exit the game came about I started backing up my town whenever I was going to use the villager reset trick so as to make sure this didn't happen.
eg. Just before resetting I'd back up my entire SD card so if exiting via the home menu caused my save to be lost the last save would be the one on my PC.

Yesterday I invited Lopez into my main town, and backed up the data before I went to bed. Today my SD card was still in my laptop so I thought I'd take all the pictures off of it to free up space, but random paranoia told me to copy them and not delete them until after placing Lopez.
I literally didn't touch anything through the Nintendo 3DS folder at all other than copying it last night. But today when I loaded ACNL it didn't display my town on the title screen and I got the message,
"Cannot use save data because it was not the last data saved. Delete data?"
Clicking No doesn't do anything.

I never played ACNL in between for my save file not to have been the last save, and my SD card didn't even go in my 3DS to do this. So somewhere in backing up my SD card something happened and my town got deleted.

I feel hollow.

 

[FancyThat]

I'm so sorry this happened .

 

[Sholee]

Yep, this happened to my first town. You can't back up the game whatsoever to your computer. No idea why people keep saying this. Copying and Pasting will corrupt the data and you'll have to start over.

 

[Sena]

Agh, that's horrible! I'm so sorry that happened, Jinglefruit. If you need any help getting started again - Bells, tools, fruit, or anything else, please PM me. That's not an empty offer, either, I'd genuinely like to help.

 

[Prisma]

Can that really happen? D: the town being deleted on the digital version?

 

[Jinglefruit]

Agh, that's horrible! I'm so sorry that happened, Jinglefruit. If you need any help getting started again - Bells, tools, fruit, or anything else, please PM me. That's not an empty offer, either, I'd genuinely like to help.

Thank you for the offer. Thankfully I left most of my golden tools in my alt town where I was gardening there last I played, and I'd catalogued a few items on that account before, and had an extra Zell living in that town. So I'm a little better off than most would be in this situation.
I'm going to just take a break for a bit as my uni workload is rapidly overtaking me.


I've made back-ups before because I used to believe they could be used provided you hadn't played AC between the back-up and when you copied the data back. But apparently not. But this never happened any other time ~ and this was my 5th or 6th time doing this.

But now I'm concerned as this could have happened just moving pics over from the DCIM folder or something, considering all I did was copy and paste the other folder, surely mis clicking and copying that as well could possibly do this to other people.

And yes, I've heard issues with both physical and digital copies of the game.

 

[J087]

So.. backing-up isn't a problem, it's manually putting that data back on the SD card that makes things go wrong?

 

[Jinglefruit]

So.. backing-up isn't a problem, it's manually putting that data back on the SD card that makes things go wrong?

My town deleted without me putting the data back on the SD card, but then what I believed to be a back-up was useless anyway. So either there is literally no point in backing it up and my town happened to pick that moment to delete or in backing my town up both my save and my backup corrupt.

 

[tigereyes86]

That's terrible! I play the physical and digital versions, granted my digital has only had me play it about 4 times ever, but if I lost my main town, I really think I'd give up except on holidays when I could do some new things.

 

[Jinglefruit]

Thankfully I also have both Physical and Digital copies. (And I played my physical copy enough to retain its villagers) So I can start anew, get some of my house back from having my own house in my HHA, some spare gold/silver tools and thank paranoia, a spare Zell and Ankha (to sell) from my physical copy. And I'll set the date back to June 12th (when I got the game) and that should replenish my hybrids somewhat ~ if I can get hold of some.

I planned for something like this a long while back just in case, so I'm better off than most people would be. Though I am going to take a break while I grieve the wastage of hundreds of hours playtime, and then try to get a town the same layout just without a billion rocks and that pond I always hated.

Really the hardest hitting bit is that I had all the bronze badges (and over half silver!), about 3/4 PWP suggested and 8/10 dream villagers. Not sure I can will myself into getting that far again.

 

[beffa]

I'm so sorry to hear this… It's awful how being so careful has caused this to happen…

 

[Zanessa]

/hugs you
I'm so sorry.
</3

 

[3DSfan134]

I don't want that to happen to me............

 

[DJStarstryker]

Like I just PMed, I'm happy to help. I have an extremely full catalog by this point. Happy to order you whatever you want. You've helped me a lot since we starting trading items and hanging out.

I can also save those extra real paintings that I have and give them to you if you want them.

Those items I already promised you in a previous PM I'll just hang onto until you're ready for them.

 

[Jinglefruit]

Thanks for all the caring messages guys.

And thanks DJStarstryker, hopefully once I restart and now I finally have wi-fi again we'll be able to play more often than we have with my continual stream of problems this past 2 months. Glad you managed to pick up your event stuff before all this happened! ~ That was literally the last time I managed to play online from Citadel!

 

[oath2order]

That's really dumb that Nintendo won't let us backup the game.

 

[Jinglefruit]

I know, I genuinely believed that provided you never played AC between backing up and taking the back up data back onto the SD it'd be fine. But somehow it changes the save time recorded so it forces you to delete your data. <- the biggest insult knowing that the game could load the save but refuses to let you.

 

[Nooblord]

SO if I get a bigger SD card I wouldn't be able to transfer AC to it?

 

[Baboom]

It's so sad how many people on these forums lose their villages for various reasons. I feel for you. Nintendo need to sort this out.

 

[Twisk]

Aww, I've actually visited your dream town before (saw it in your signature once and randomly decided to visit), and it's sad to think that it's gone now. I'm sorry this happened to you!