Lost old cars, credits and progress after new install

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM3 Discussion
1

Hi,

This is slightly complicated, but I’ll try and keep it as simple as I can. Apologies in advance for being long winded.

Background:

  • My roommate had an Xbox360 and Forza Motorsport 3. I played a lot, made a reasonable amount of progress - Gamerscore 475/1000, Achievements 30/50, a few cars and over a million in credits (as I recall).
  • He moved out, I didn’t play for a few years, but my profile was still on the console.
  • He recently was moving out of town and getting rid of his stuff - he gave me the console. He didn’t have his FM3 disc any any more, so I bought another used copy off some guy.
    All good so far.
    Problem 1:
  • When I tried playing the new disc, it would freeze immediately after “Press A to Start”. I couldn’t do anything at all. There were no issues with any other games.
  • I tried installing the game to hard disk, clearing system cache, running from a different profile and a bunch of other things.
  • Eventually I followed the diagnostic steps on the Xbox support page and it pointed to a hard disk issue.
  • Since all other games were working fine, I was sure it’s not a hardware fault but more likely a data corruption.
    Solution 1:
  • I decided to backup all the data to a USB thumb drive and format the HDD.
  • The backup gave some errors with the Road Racing Track Pack, so eventually I skipped that and moved on. I’m guessing this may also have been the data corruption that was causing it to freeze in the first place.
  • Completed the data transfer, formatted hard disk, installed FM3 discs 1 & 2, transferred data back from USB drive to HDD.
  • FM3 is now able to run without any issues.
    Problem 2:
  • The game treats me as a brand new player, all my progress is lost. No cars, no credit, nothing. Even though I had backed it up on the USB drive. But my gamer profile shows my achievements, which is how I saw my gamerscore etc.
  • Checked the USB drive on my PC now and all it has are a bunch of Data000_ files, which fill up nearly the entire drive.
  • But if I plug it into the Xbox again, it shows almost completely empty. Not sure why this mismatch.
    Questions:
  • I understand that my previous data was lost when I formatted the drive. But why was it not restored when I transferred back from the USB?
  • I have not written anything on the USB drive or performed any other operations on it since then. Is it possible to somehow retrieve the original backup and load that onto the console again?
    I have spent a lot of time getting where I was, and I would really like not to lose it. Any suggestions or solutions would be very welcome.
    And last but not least if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading :slight_smile:
2

Short answer, No. When you formatted the hard drive, you wiped out any links to information on the external thumb drive. The data files have Data000 now because of the format.

You need to start over now. Your achievements are part of Xbox Live’s system, not local, therefore they do carry over.

3

Thanks for the answer.

Does this mean that all progress has been lost for all games on this console?
And for future reference, would there have been a way to fix the issue without wiping the information?

Thanks.

4

MikeLeSpike
I know how it feels to loose your game save. If you want some help to get some cars, just send me a friend request. My gametag is TarryVariable1.

5

Thanks for the offer, much appreciated :slight_smile: I haven’t yet started playing again because it suddenly seems like a chore rather than the joy I was looking forward to… but who knows, maybe it’ll be fun after all. And if not, then I’ll definitely take you up on that offer :wink:

Cheers

6

From what I am aware FM3 saves can’t be copied to USB like other game saves, did your Xbox give you a msg to “move” it instead? if you pressed no then the format deleted it… If yes then it’s on your USB…if you are able to see your save i tge Xbox menu when choosing your memory unit i suggest you move it back onto hdd. For some reason your USB can’t be read by the game when attempting to load. Cross your fingers it’s not overwritten by the save that has 0CR and one car.

7

I have had the luck of this as well,