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PSA: Your PS4 might not be backing its saves up to the cloud

J

jiggles

Banned
Figured I'd just let people know as I almost lost all my saves.

So I bought a 2TB drive for my PS4 and I'm getting ready to do the swap. I don't have a spare USB drive to back stuff up, but I'm just going to redownload everything and all my saves are on the cloud storage, so I'll copy them down on the other end. But just to be extra sure, I decide to check what's on the cloud storage before I power down, and only a handful of saves were backed up. I pushed a save to upload, and it told me I didn't have enough space left.

Looking at the sizes, of the 1GB available, NBA 2K14 was taking up 900MB. And I drilled in and there was the same "User Data" file duplicated dozens of times.

What I figure happened was that some bug in a previous firmware caused it to not recognise the existing save files, and upload it anew every time. But the worrying thing is that it doesn't alert the user to the space being filled and it being unable to add new files.

So yeah, my PS4 hasn't backed up a save for months, and gave no indication that anything went wrong, so you should check things are okay with your own.
 
W

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
Sony needs to get rid of the 1GB limit, it's a joke. They also should open the cloud to all people instead of making it a PS+ paywall.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
Does it only do this if the upload fails due to size or something? It's always warned me when it couldn't upload to save (only twice though, never because of full storage either)

Wario64 said:
Sony needs to get rid of the 1GB limit, it's a joke. They also should open the cloud to all people instead of making it a PS+ paywall.
Click to expand...

PS4 saves apparently being 11MB minimum makes the 1GB look pretty small
 
J

jiggles

Banned
Sir TapTap said:
Does it only do this if the upload fails due to size or something? It's always warned me when it couldn't upload to save (only twice though, never because of full storage either)
Click to expand...

Yes, I've had "failed upload" messages before when something had gone wrong, but if you're out of space it just fails silently.
 
Andrefpvs

Andrefpvs

Member
jiggles said:
Figured I'd just let people know as I almost lost all my saves.

So I bought a 2TB drive for my PS4 and I'm getting ready to do the swap. I don't have a spare USB drive to back stuff up, but I'm just going to redownload everything and all my saves are on the cloud storage, so I'll copy them down on the other end. But just to be extra sure, I decide to check what's on the cloud storage before I power down, and only a handful of saves were backed up. I pushed a save to upload, and it told me I didn't have enough space left.

Looking at the sizes, of the 1GB available, NBA 2K14 was taking up 900MB. And I drilled in and there was the same "User Data" file duplicated dozens of times.

What I figure happened was that some bug in a previous firmware caused it to not recognise the existing save files, and upload it anew every time. But the worrying thing is that it doesn't alert the user to the space being filled and it being unable to add new files.

So yeah, my PS4 hasn't backed up a save for months, and gave no indication that anything went wrong, so you should check things are okay with your own.
Click to expand...

This also highlights how while on the PS3 and PS Vita the 1GB cloud space is acceptable, it's just way too low on PS4.
 
I

InsaneTiger

Member
Save files shouldn't take up too much space. I have a ton of save files on the cloud already. I noticed on the PS4 when it fails it will tell you it failed in the Notifications icon.
 
K

Kiyo

Member
It's just a bug with NBA 2k14. I've had it as well. Just delete the saves and make sure NBA doesn't save to the cloud.
 
J

jiggles

Banned
InsaneTiger said:
Save files shouldn't take up too much space. I have a ton of save files on the cloud already. I noticed on the PS4 when it fails it will tell you it failed in the Notifications icon.
Click to expand...

But, crucially, it doesn't do this if it failed because you ran out of space.
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
jiggles said:
Yes, I've had "failed upload" messages before when something had gone wrong, but if you're out of space it just fails silently.
Click to expand...

That's awful, you'd think that'd be one of the most common reasons too. Glad I checked storage recently--only a couple hundred MB used. That NBA bug sounds nasty, hope that got fixed. Is it a Sony bug or 2k bug?
 
Danlord

Danlord

Member
I manually upload my Don't Starve savefile, because of how far progress-wise I am - I'd rather not have it unexpectedly corrupt and lose all that progress, even as a precautionary to this exact potential problem.

Just checking now on my PS4 and I did last play inFamous a week(ish) ago but I've been playing Don't Starve constantly for the past 2 weeks and without my manual uploading it's not uploaded a new file since 20th August, which isn't nice. I also forgot about the 1GB cap, which is ridiculous now with the price of cloud storage services, Sony should be doing better than this.
 
J

jiggles

Banned
Actually, just going through these uploads manually now, some of these sizes make the 1GB limit look nuts. 74MB for Octodad. 105MB for Trials Fusion.
 
B

Birgitte2004

Member
Mine gave me "failed upload" messages because my cloud storage was full, it did not fail silently.

Weird that it fails silently for other people.
 
I

Ingueferroque

Banned
Which 2TB drive did you purchase? What screwdriver did you use to install it?

jiggles said:
Actually, just going through these uploads manually now, some of these sizes make the 1GB limit look nuts. 74MB for Octodad. 105MB for Trials Fusion.
Click to expand...

That sucks. 1GB is not sustainable..
 
C

CambriaRising

Member
jiggles said:
Actually, just going through these uploads manually now, some of these sizes make the 1GB limit look nuts. 74MB for Octodad. 105MB for Trials Fusion.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm looking at mine right now as well. its pretty insane. I remember when entire games took up less space than this >_>
 
A

Arklite

Member
Yeah I don't think mine has ever uploaded a save since launch and I'm only now realizing the larger PS4 save file size combined with a ton of PS3 saves and only 1gb of storage is probably why.
 
F

FlyStarJay

Member
Only twice at the same time i had failed upload. Dunno why. But those same saves uploaded by itself later on. On my end things are fine. Anytime i put my ps4 on i always go check
 
D

dallow_bg

nods at old men
Arklite said:
Yeah I don't think mine has ever uploaded a save since launch and I'm only now realizing the larger PS4 save file size combined with a ton of PS3 saves and only 1gb of storage is probably why.
Click to expand...

It's 1GB per platform.

Check Uploads under Notifications to see if saves are uploading while in standby.
 
Caayn

Caayn

Member
jiggles said:
Yes, I've had "failed upload" messages before when something had gone wrong, but if you're out of space it just fails silently.
Click to expand...
Mmhh strange, you'd expect a message when your cloud storage is full. Hope that this will be addressed in the future when more people will be getting close to the 1GB limit, which needs to be increased imo.
 
C

Chri_stoph

Member
Just checked, and realized that my storage was full aswell. With some games alone taking up over 100mb they should really increase the storage.
 
S

shungokusatsu

Member
Saves are uploaded on shutdown as well. Ever notice it can take the PS4 several seconds to shutdown? That's why - it's uploaded saves and installed updates. Disconnect the internet connection and it shuts down instantly.
 
C

CorrisD

badchoiceboobies
Sir TapTap said:
PS4 saves apparently being 11MB minimum makes the 1GB look pretty small
Click to expand...

It's weird really, I'm pretty sure we had a topic on the issue of saves being 11mb before but I can't remember what the outcome of it was. Why does a save need to be 11mb minimum, thats massive considering how little information some of these games actually need to save compared to previous generations of games.

Someone needs to get Shu on the line, it isn't likely to be an issue now but come Christmas and into the start of next year with how many games are coming, I can see this becoming a real issue for a lot of people without them even knowing why or how.
 
T

theWB27

Member
So the clusterF that is NBA2k14 just keeps on delivering. Soon as this game is over I'll get to check. Have no idea what saves are in the cloud. Haven't checked since I got the machine.
 
L

LX_Theo

Banned
The issue here is that the NBA game is doing saves in a riduclously stupid way. 900MB? What the fuck is wrong with that save file(s?)?
 
A

andshrew

Member
This exact problem happens with FIFA14 as well. What I suspect is happening is this - every week it does a team update. The game deletes the local save holding this information, and creates a new one. Because it's a 'new' save the PS4 uploads it to the cloud as such. The PS4 never automatically deletes anything from the cloud, so because it keeps uploading new files you consequently end up with tons of them on there.

The other issue is with the size of saves - I can't believe for a moment that the smallest save file is actually 11MB. To me, and this is again speculation, it appears saves are allocated in block sized containers, with the default being 11MB. The Trials Fusion save is shown as 105MB, but from manually uploading and downloading that save from the cloud there is no way it is actually that size based on the time it takes. So the issue here is there are saves being allocated massive amounts of storage that don't actually need, and obviously as far as the cloud storage is concerned it needs to reserve the amount of space the save has been allocated 'just in case'. So they either need to address this or increase the amount of storage available.
 
D

dh4niel

Member
Mine stopped automatically uploading saves a while back. Last time I did it was manually.
The trusty PS3 on the other-hand does.
 
G

gruenel

Member
CorrisD said:
It's weird really, I'm pretty sure we had a topic on the issue of saves being 11mb before but I can't remember what the outcome of it was. Why does a save need to be 11mb minimum, thats massive considering how little information some of these games actually need to save compared to previous generations of games.

Someone needs to get Shu on the line, it isn't likely to be an issue now but come Christmas and into the start of next year with how many games are coming, I can see this becoming a real issue for a lot of people without them even knowing why or how.
Click to expand...

Yeah I made that topic, but no one actually knew why PS4 saves are so ridiculously big.
 
W

westman

Member
jiggles said:
What I figure happened was that some bug in a previous firmware caused it to not recognise the existing save files, and upload it anew every time.
Click to expand...

Since it only seems to happen with one particular game, I'd say it's much more likely to be a bug in the game rather than a bug in the PS4 system software. A system notification when you run out of space could be seen as a nice addition, but you would probably not want duplicate error messages about the same error, so it would make sense to have error reports from the game or the system, but not from both. My guess is that the PS4 correctly reports the error back to the game, and that the game is supposed to notify the user about it but neglects to do that.
 
S

Samus4145

Member
Reminds me of some of my games on PS3. It will keep trying to backup the files, but they are close to or over 1GB in size.
 
R

Reule

Member
My saves haven't automatically uploaded for some time now. It should automatically upload when you power down but it seems to only do it if I put the console into Standby mode. I was actually surprised recently when it uploaded my TLOU:R saves when I turned the system off. I haven't played any other game since then to see if everything is good again.

I'm thinking there may have been a bug introduced in one of the recent firmwares. I remember there was an issue back in February or March where automatic uploads would fail and you'd have to either delete a save on the cloud storage or you could manually push the save through. I don't think my issue is in regards to size but a bug of some kind.

There are still a lot of kinks in how the PS4 operates.
 
S

SZips

Member
ButchCassidy386 said:
I get failed upload alerts every time I turn my PS4 on from standby.
Click to expand...

I am in the same boat.

It was fine for a while after I had my PS4 in March. Then around when Bound by Flame came out, it gave some errors with not being able to automatically upload those save files. Then it seemed to be resolved for a while.

Now suddenly it's having trouble uploading my Madden saves (Profile, Franchise, etc.). The kicker is that some of them are uploaded just fine, so it seems like a crapshoot on what is and is not uploaded. I can tell the failed uploads to retry and they go through just fine every single time.
 
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