Saves disappearing randomly since 1.35

[Alyonso]

3 of my saves disappeared totally. 2 of them disappeared around the 1700s and one of them by the 1500s. I can see them in the files but they are indivisible in the game (not even altered or altered, straight up gone). Nothing out of the ordinary happens before their disappearance and I get to save-load them a couple of times before they are gone. This never happened before 1.35.
I tried disabling the mod I had, rebooting my computer, and verifying the local files but none of them worked.
Also for some reason sometimes my save names keep adding "_backup" at the end of their name, turning into something like "France_backup_backup_backup" which does not cause any problems but it's kinda weird. I cannot manage those files nor change their names manually as I play ironman.

I started all 3 of my disappearing games after updating my game to 1.35 and now they don't even show up when I try to see the outdated/altered saves. They seem to be completely disappeared. However, I can locate them in the files and now attaching them below (actually more than a copy as you can see in the image I sent you there is more than one for some reason, and are usually different in sizes so I thought sending multiple samples might help).

Also, I don't know if relevant but I'd like to address that I'm only missing the Domination DLC and using the Fast Universalis mode. That mode seems outdated but still lets me play the game in Ironman and I can still get the achievements. I wonder if my saves keep getting corrupted by that mod (disabling didn't help) and if there's any way to recover those saves.
One last think I should address is I quitted the last 2 disappearing runs while I was at recently started wars and I don't remember the other one. I don't know if that's relevant.

I have been directed here by paradox plaza support but I can't share the links from here.

 

[grotaclas]

I had a look at your saves. Both gugu saves and Arabia_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup.eu4 consist entirely of NULL-Bytes so all data is lost. Arabia_Backup.eu4 is about 1/3 data and 2/3 NULL Bytes and zortt_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup_Backup.eu4 is about 90% data and 10% NULL bytes. All the data in the areas with NULL-Bytes is lost and can't be recovered. Eu4 doesn't show these saves, because this corruption prevents it from opening them. The last save could potentially be partially recovered if you invest a lot of time into the save game editing(but achievements would be disabled).

These kind of saves with NULL-Bytes happen from time to time to some people. In some cases it happens because Windows is not shut down cleanly before the save has been fully written to disk(this might be after eu4 has exited, because the write could have been cached). But in many other cases there is no clear cause for the corruption.

I can only recommend that you regularly create additional backups of your saves and store them in a different location(ideally a different disk/cloud storage), so that you have something to which you can go back in case your main save gets corrupted again. If you always use different names/folders for these backups, you will have multiple options to choose from in case some of those backups are also corrupted. And always copy (not move) them back to the save games folder for loading and don't overwrite existing saves in the process so that you have less risk of data loss if something goes wrong.

The additional _Backup in some of your saves could have happened if your original save became corrupted while its _Backup was still working. Then eu4 will show the _Backup in the continue button in the main menu and when you load that, it will create a new backup which has an additional _Backup. Each time this happens, you get another _Backup in the name. This will also happen if you intentionally load an _Backup save from the save games list in the single player menu

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Paradox. I'm just trying to help people.