Help: Backing up PS3 HDD without PS3

[patsu]

Dang ! I thought God has intervened.

 

[tha_con]

Do we have a nifty B3D leader board or anything like that? Would be interesting to have something like that

Not that it matters, as I'm sure many folks here are far better than me, Trophy count really, to me, shows how much free time you have (unless you have lots of WipEout HD trophies, in which case, I hate you, and that game....no I love it).

 

[randycat99]

Wow!...maybe my backup was a dud this whole time?! When I tried to use the delete backup data on the ps3, it tells me there is no data found? I imagine it would be useless to restore, as well (if I needed to restore my data). What a fine time it would have been to find that out, eh?

That seems to underscore one major missing component if this backup utility is going to be worth anything to anybody- a verify data test!

 

[patsu]

Ha ! That would explain the invisible backup set.

EDIT: Sony should have an official suggestion box. I wonder how many customer calls they get for Restore problems.
The closest I can find is this: http://playstation.custhelp.com/cgi...ts=0&p_pv=1.4&p_prods=4&prod_lvl1=&prod_lvl2=

 

[randycat99]

I dunno what to say. Afaik, the backup went swimmingly. Had no reason to suspect anything was amiss. I even got that message at the end of the process saying that the backup is complete.


I don't know how common a dud backup can happen on ps3's across the world, but this really drops my confidence on the reliability of ps3 backups. There's nothing to verify it, and the only way you can really determine it is viable is by overwriting your perfectly operational existing ps3. If it isn't viable, you are boned, anyway. If you wait until you actually need that backup, you may find the data was useless, all along.

They need to rethink how to make this backup thing really "work", as opposed to simply leaving it up to a coin toss.

So hopefully a reformat of this external hdd will recover the space. I had planned to do this anyway, but damn, if I had to re-configure a hdd I had already customized just because of a dud ps3 backup!

 

[patsu]

I agree ! In fact, I just filed a complain via the link above.

 

[randycat99]

Reformatted...space looks nominal. This time I have 3 partitions (more in-line with how I plan to utilize this thing). Going to give ps3 a 2nd shot to backup to the largest partition. Wonder if it will see it ok and actually put a successful backup on it...(being that the partitions are hfs+/hfs+/fat32)

If the ps3 gums up the works, this time, I will have a legitimate reason to be disappointed. Essentially, it would mean that if you use an external hdd to backup your ps3, it needs to be a dedicated hdd. If you keep other data on it, that data could then be at risk (or you may need to swap it to yet another hdd, in the event that you need to reformat the 1st hdd to get back the space from a bungled ps3 backup).

 

[randycat99]

Thanks for the link, patsu. I left a comment there, as well.

The backup utility is a great idea, but it is missing a vital component- the ability to verfiy or checksum the backup image. If there is no way to determine the backup is good or still good (after some period of time), then it has dubious benefits to restore a messed-up ps3 hdd when you actually need it.

Additionally, it may be worthwhile to investigate if a saved backup on an external hdd remains usable after that hdd sees connection to another computer (for other uses on a PC/Mac other than ps3 backups). I have experienced issues with this very scenario. It would be an unreasonable expectation that the external media you choose must be used on only a ps3 and nothing else, at the risk of data integrity if you do otherwise.

For the record, I attemped a backup for a 2nd time. This time, I went right to the delete backup data option to see if the ps3 would verify that there is actually a backup set present that could be deleted, in the first place. It did verify that there was something to delete. Then I canceled out of that whole menu.

Then I disconnected from the ps3 and then connected to my Mac. Sure enough, it shows nothing of substantial size in any directory on that fat32 partition, but the free space stat is most definitely showing space used for a 32 GB backup- essentially, the same thing that happened to me the 1st time. Disk utility also shows a great deal of issues on that partition- used clusters with 0 file size. The other hfs+ partitions remain A-OK, however.

Now I disconnect from the Mac, then reconnect to the ps3, and navigate to the delete backup data menu to see if it still recognizes the backup data like it verified was present and valid the first time, immediately after creating the backup. Sure enough, no backup data is detected! I dunno what to say, but this ps3 backup situation seems harder to accomplish than it should be.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I think your mac is borking the data when it looks it over. I know from moving an external drive back and forth between a mac and a Vista PC that OS X will create its own hidden files and directories, I think just from the act of mounting. It could aslo be trying to correct what it perceives as errors, but which are intentional file structures created by the PS3. It's not surprising that the PS3 data will be hidden. Just a recent example, the disc I burnt to upgrade the firmware on my Seagate hard drive only had a couple files that were actually visible in windows, but my computer had no problem booting from the files it Windows couldn't see.

 

[randycat99]

It could very well be the case, but I would hope a ps3 backup image could be a little more robust. Writing a monolithic file to fat32 isn't exactly rocket science these days. If the ps3 is getting thrown off track by some extra folders or invisible files, that opens up all sorts of possibilities where you could nuke a backup just by mounting to any other computer other than the ps3. That's a pretty unreasonable usage scenario to dedicate an entire external drive for ps3 use only. It's certainly possible to accomodate if that is a requirement, but I don't think Sony has been particularly clear that is an actual requirement.

I mean, Sony can make a cellphone deal with extraneous hidden files from a Mac, why not a ps3? It may be a nuisance at times (being that you have to manually delete these files in the phone), but it never stops it from recognizing the legitimate media that you have transferred over.

I guess I'll have to try out the scenario where the external hdd goes straight from ps3 to a Windows machine, to see if it makes a difference.

 

[deepbrown]

Trophies are recorded online, so you're still bottom of the pile, Patsu!

Depp : How'd you get the press games? Did Sony arrange something directly?

Depp

Well I think I've got WipEout. I found the demo then an unlock full game key...on one of my many accounts.

I might have overreacted before.

 

[phat]

The PS3 backup utility is junk. I've spent the past week, a few hours per night, trying to back up my hard disk. Something on my system was causing the backup utility to fail midway through with an "80010038" error, so I've been incrementally whittling down my hard disk, from the least precious to the most precious items, until the backup would complete. I went from 60-ish gigs of data down to 377MB before it succeeded. In the end, it turned out to be one of the themes I had downloaded (and can no longer download). The resultant backup hardly deserves to be called a backup seeing as how I had to chuck out 98% of my drive to create it.

The least the backup utility could have done is tell me which component it's barfing on!

After I succeeded in backing up my drive, I went to re-download some of the themes I had deleted and that screwed up my drive again, so it seems that 2.60 can't save themes correctly...

 

[randycat99]

I wonder what the actual statistics would be for successful restorations from a backup file are for the ps3. No doubt, it must be working for somebody, but how reliable are these backups overall? I doubt there is any way to really find out (or collect that sort of information), but it really does seem like Sony needs to do more ironing out of this function. If it cannot be relied on, then it isn't a very good backup.

 

[patsu]

Worked for me twice. I usually copy my game saves manually again, just to be safe.

EDIT: Yes, Sony need to fix this asap. If it's a common issue, they should already know it by now. Heck, even if it's uncommon, they need to address this.

 

[Arwin]

Sounds like an issue with themes exclusively. I've backed up and restored twice without issue (once for installing linux, once for installing a new hdd). The second time I had 55GB of data, backed up to a 40ish GB large folder on my USB drive. No problems.

 

[randycat99]

Well, I finally got a viable backup file. Either I completely got lucky on the 3rd try or it had something to do with the following:

-backup ps3
-while still connected, verify it sees a backup set to delete- check
-connect to WinPC, look around, verify multiple dat files of substantial file size- check
-connect to ps3 and re-verify it sees a backup set to delete- check
-connect to mac, look around, verify multiple dat files of substantial file size - check?!
-connect to ps3 and re-verify it sees a backup set to delete- check!

So it lived through a Mac cycle, this time. I don't know why. The only real difference is that the first thing that touched it after the ps3 was a Windows machine. I'm not sure what there could be in the process to "lock" the backup file in place, such that it is not disturbed when browsing with a Mac.

 

[patsu]

Next thing we need is to keep shifts between wife and hubby to maintain our game data backup schedule.

Quick, Sony. Do your thing.

 

[djskribbles]

So I just bought a big 32GB USB drive to backup my PS3. Now that I've put everything on it, can I just put the 'PS3' folder on my PC's HDD then put it back on the USB drive to restore it (if I never need to) so I can use the USB stick for other things?

BTW, I plugged the USB drive into my PC and it shows a bunch of archive files. I don't think there will be a problem, but I would like some confirmation.

 

[tha_con]

The PS3 backup utility is junk. I've spent the past week, a few hours per night, trying to back up my hard disk. Something on my system was causing the backup utility to fail midway through with an "80010038" error, so I've been incrementally whittling down my hard disk, from the least precious to the most precious items, until the backup would complete. I went from 60-ish gigs of data down to 377MB before it succeeded. In the end, it turned out to be one of the themes I had downloaded (and can no longer download). The resultant backup hardly deserves to be called a backup seeing as how I had to chuck out 98% of my drive to create it.

The least the backup utility could have done is tell me which component it's barfing on!

After I succeeded in backing up my drive, I went to re-download some of the themes I had deleted and that screwed up my drive again, so it seems that 2.60 can't save themes correctly...

That's one thing that the PS3 needs to do. For certain files, it needs to tell you what's backing up.

Similar to the way Windows will list each and every file it copies while copying a folder. Then, if it fails, we need a message that says "An error occured while copying [insert file here]. This file may be corrupt".

DO IT SONY!

 

[Arwin]

So I just bought a big 32GB USB drive to backup my PS3. Now that I've put everything on it, can I just put the 'PS3' folder on my PC's HDD then put it back on the USB drive to restore it (if I never need to) so I can use the USB stick for other things?

BTW, I plugged the USB drive into my PC and it shows a bunch of archive files. I don't think there will be a problem, but I would like some confirmation.

Yeah, this is possible. I've done a similar thing to keep a just-in-case backup. I like how they create a date-stamped folder within the PS3 folder in case you make multiple backups, too.