Backup Options for PS3

[beatledud]

Well my PS3 HDD died, and yeah, for only $50 I got a new one and upgraded from 80GB to 320GB. I was hoping I could somehow recover my old drive on my Mac, but after no success and some research I discovered that bloody Sony encrypts the drives in an encrypted file structure. BAH!

So now I've lost all my data and saved games, and this is quite disappointing. I don't want this to happen again, so I'm wondering what are the best backup options/methods for your PS3? Do people just do full backups or just copy saved game data? How do you do it so you make sure it's done regularly and you don't forget for weeks at a time? What about saved game data, does a full backup prevent the issue where if you load saves onto your PS3 from a USB source it disables Trophies achieved from that point on in the game?

Currently I have a AEBS with 802.11n (couple years old now). I have a 1TB and a 500GB WD MyBooks plugged into it. The 1TB is used for storage of Media (75% full) and the 500GB is used as a Time Machine backup for my MBP which has an internal 500GB HDD (WD drive is 50% full). I have Nullriver Medialink installed on my MBP so I can stream my media from my 1TB external to my PS3 for viewing/listening.

I'd love some auto backup method for my PS3 to backup onto my external 500GB Time Machine drive, much like Time Machine does for my MBP. I don't plan on getting even half full with my PS3's drive in the near future, so I think the 500GB backup external should suffice in storing both my PS3 and MBP backups. Thoughts?

 

[jaw04005]

You can’t automatically backup your PS3, and you can’t network backup your PS3 either. You’ll need to plug an external drive up to it and do a manual backup from within the XMB.

And I thought the PS3’s data structure was readable like the PSP’s? No? That sucks.

You might purchase a hard drive recovery utility like SpinRite and see if it can repair your original disk drive long enough to recover your backup.

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

I back up my PS3 every week with an external WD Passport Essential. I just partition 80GB (which can fit about two PS3 backups) in FAT32 and the rest I use for other stuff in Mac format. It only takes an hour or so to backup your saves and the drive is like $60 or $70 and has uses aside from the backup. Your PS3's hard drive has the same likelihood of crashing as your computer's - live and learn...

 

[Taustin Powers]

I'm doing a full backup to an external HD right now. Probably a good 200 GB worth of movies, games and demos.....and it's giving me an estimated remaining time of over SEVEN HOURS!

Now the only things that are really important to me are the game saves. The movies would not be so much of a loss, yet they take up the most space. I really wish I could select items to backup, maybe a checkbox list, so I could uncheck movies. Or something like that. I guess I could individually copy each game save to the hd, but that's pain the behind and would take forever.

 

[e²Studios]

I'm doing a full backup to an external HD right now. Probably a good 200 GB worth of movies, games and demos.....and it's giving me an estimated remaining time of over SEVEN HOURS!

Now the only things that are really important to me are the game saves. The movies would not be so much of a loss, yet they take up the most space. I really wish I could select items to backup, maybe a checkbox list, so I could uncheck movies. Or something like that. I guess I could individually copy each game save to the hd, but that's pain the behind and would take forever.

You can't copy some game saves, with those the only way to back them up is to use the backup method through XMB. I stream from a NAS, so I don't have any movies on mine. The biggest thing that takes up space are the installs from games. Considering the amount of games I have, thats a lot of space.

 

[gslrider]

I realize this is an old post, but hopefully some people are still reading it. So my 60GB PS3 finally succumbed to the blinking RLOD. And wouldn't you know it, it happened out of the blue, and I hadn't had the opportunity to back up my PS3 HDD. And since I can't start my system up, there's no way for me to plug in my external drive to back up the HDD.

I did this a year ago, when I upgraded the 60GB HDD with a 350GB drive. Backed up old drive contents through the XMB on to my FAT32 formatted external USB drive. Swapped out the old HDD with the new, formatted, and did a restore from backup. Worked like a charm.

My question now is, since I can't do that again because my PS3 won't start up, is there a way for me to take the current PS3 HDD, put it in a external case, plug it into my computer and back up it's contents on to a FAT32 external? Then be able to use that backup to restore from, if the repair shop deems I need to reformat my HDD when they fix my PS3? Any input or direction would be greatly appreciated. I have a lot of stuff on my drive and would love to be able to salvage them all. Note to self and others...back up your PS3 regularly. People, including myself, tend to forget it's just like any other computer, and ***** happens.