Swapping out my PS3: What do I have to backup and how?

[Jon Weaver]

My PS3 is crashing/freezing several times a day and following my post asking whether this is happening to others, I can only conclude that I have a fault.

Rather than risk it, I am going to get it swapped out.


So I need to backup all my saves and re-download everything I have downloaded so far... Does anyone have any tips?

What exactly do I need to backup? What do I back it up with (Memory stick)?? Can I backup my friends list, or are they stored externally in my PSN account?

Any tips would be greatly apprecaited as I would like to make this as painless as possible.

All the best

jon

 

[cracker]

If you do a full system backup to a USB hard drive using the backup utility then EVERYTHING will be backed up. Downloaded games, movies, mp3s, game saves, user profiles etc

If you backup to a memory card/stick then you would have to backup manually depending on how much stuff you have on your system. You can manually backup game saves, movies, mp3s, but not downloaded games or user profile data so you would have to make a note of all the username/password details for all the psn accounts on your system

Dont forget to do a full "secure" format before sending the PS3 back to make sure all your data is erased safely

 

[kraized]

Just a quick question. If you do a full system backup, is the backup bootable, so if you needed to restore from the backup the PS3 will be just as you had it before?

 

[Jon Weaver]

If you do a full system backup to a USB hard drive using the backup utility then EVERYTHING will be backed up. Downloaded games, movies, mp3s, game saves, user profiles etc

If you backup to a memory card/stick then you would have to backup manually depending on how much stuff you have on your system. You can manually backup game saves, movies, mp3s, but not downloaded games or user profile data so you would have to make a note of all the username/password details for all the psn accounts on your system

Dont forget to do a full "secure" format before sending the PS3 back to make sure all your data is erased safely

WOW... I didn't realise it had this feature.. Thats a great help, as I have downloaded LOADS of stuff and don't really want to have to do it again.

That seals it.. I am tempted to live with the 'freezing' for now, just because I can 't be bothered to download everything again. But since you can do a 'system backup', I it will make things much easier.

Thanks for that.. I will get on with it tonight

Cheers

Jon

 

[Jon Weaver]

Can this 'feature' be used to upgrade a disk too? I have often thought that I might like to put in a bigger drive at some point, but was put off by the fact I would have to download everything again.

Will the 'system backup' allow you to restore to a larger drive?

Jon

 

[lovebeer]

Sure will

 

[Bogside]

WOW... I didn't realise it had this feature.. Thats a great help, as I have downloaded LOADS of stuff and don't really want to have to do it again.

That seals it.. I am tempted to live with the 'freezing' for now, just because I can 't be bothered to download everything again. But since you can do a 'system backup', I it will make things much easier.

Thanks for that.. I will get on with it tonight

Cheers

Jon

Just be aware that you can't choose which bits to back up as it's an all or nothing thing. It also means that you have to have the capacity in your usb stick (or whatever) to fit it all in one place as it won't let you do it in parts. At least this is what I found when I did it at the weekend before Sony replaced my unit.

It meant that for me it was almost pointless - I had 20gb of data to save but only a 4gb memory stick!

 

[Jon Weaver]

Just be aware that you can't choose which bits to back up as it's an all or nothing thing. It also means that you have to have the capacity in your usb stick (or whatever) to fit it all in one place as it won't let you do it in parts. At least this is what I found when I did it at the weekend before Sony replaced my unit.

It meant that for me it was almost pointless - I had 20gb of data to save but only a 4gb memory stick!

Thats fine.. We have a shared 80g USB Hard-Drive at work that we use to transfer big files around. I am going to borrow that for a few days.. I am going to take a system backup to the HD and will also take a backup of my saves (just in case) to a memory stick.

Replacement PS3 is due on Friday.. Fingers crossed!!

Jon

 

[A5tra_G]

Dont forget that the media you use to back up to has to be formatted as fat32 and not ntfs as ps3 wont recognise ntfs. you can use partion magic or similar to do this.