Backing up data on the ps3's hard drive

[Gamekid]

Does anyone on here back up data off of their ps3's hard drive? It's mentioned in the mannual that you should. I really haven't had any problems with data loss, just one game which was time crisis 4, but you depend on your hard drive to save and load data when you use your ps3. Can you copy game data to an external hard drive so that if something happens to your game data, you can just delete the data and copy it from your backup device?

[Rike255]

I make back-ups once in a while. Maybe 3 times since I got my PS3. It's more of an insurance policy in case my PS3 dies on me or something.

You can also just copy the data you wanna keep (ie game saves) to a flash drive as a kind of backup. I did the full backup thing to an external HDD though just cause I could.

[kingofgrills]

Originally Posted by Rike255

I make back-ups once in a while. Maybe 3 times since I got my PS3. It's more of an insurance policy in case my PS3 dies on me or something.

You can also just copy the data you wanna keep (ie game saves) to a flash drive as a kind of backup. I did the full backup thing to an external HDD though just cause I could.

If you do a full system backup to an external USB connected hard drive, does that hard drive have to be dedicated for PS3 use? I have a 500 MB iBook external drive connected to my PS3. I've always wondered if I could use that drive to do a full backup of the PS3. Will that work? Will it hose my PC backups on it?

Thanks for the help. My 60 gig drive is just about full, mostly game installs and game save files, and I really want to upgrade it. I just don't want to lose a ton of info in the process.

[Rike255]

Originally Posted by kingofgrills

If you do a full system backup to an external USB connected hard drive, does that hard drive have to be dedicated for PS3 use? I have a 500 MB iBook external drive connected to my PS3. I've always wondered if I could use that drive to do a full backup of the PS3. Will that work? Will it hose my PC backups on it?

Thanks for the help. My 60 gig drive is just about full, mostly game installs and game save files, and I really want to upgrade it. I just don't want to lose a ton of info in the process.

It's just a back-up file if I remember right. It puts it in a folder on the hard drive automatically. Called PS3 -> Backup or something like that. It does it all automatically. I've never had to do a restore with it before and the HDD I used was empty so I didn't check if anything else was lost. But you'll be fine. Maybe someone who's actually looked into these things can help more.

[ps3andlovinit]

Originally Posted by Rike255

It's just a back-up file if I remember right. It puts it in a folder on the hard drive automatically. Called PS3 -> Backup or something like that. It does it all automatically. I've never had to do a restore with it before and the HDD I used was empty so I didn't check if anything else was lost. But you'll be fine. Maybe someone who's actually looked into these things can help more.

Correct it just creates a folder based on a datestamp with files inside.

[blubullet]

Originally Posted by Gamekid

Can you copy game data to an external hard drive so that if something happens to your game data, you can just delete the data and copy it from your backup device?

For most games, yes you can. I try to backup my gamesaves to a usb stick on a regular basis just to be safe. Some games however, have locked saves which you cannot copy. I believe the only way to back these up is doing a full system backup, so I've tried to start doing that more regularly as well.