So for anyone who doesn’t want something like OP’s situation to happen. On iOS, which sorry that’s all I know maybe someone else can comment on android but it’s probably fairly close to what I describe. So anyway open the “files” app, on iOS it’s literally an app named “Files”, navigate to the “Stardew valley” folder open it, you will see all your save sub-folders, long press on the sub-folder then release so copy/paste/more option appears and then I just save a copy in a new folder named “game backups”. Also you can change the actual saves sub folder name(don’t change the first StardewValley folder as the game need this, but changing the sub-folder names won’t effect how the save loads if you want multiple backups of a single game or just to make it easier to tel backups apart. Then occasionally I update the back-up saves like after about a month of in game play just to stay current or close to current. It isn’t perfect becasue obv you can still lose some progress unless you just constantly backup but losing a bit of progress is better than losing a game your 2-3(or 10) in game years into.
